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The Pretty One has all of the elements of a good indie film; first there’s Zoe Kazan (Ruby Sparks), the bubbly actress whose name may not yet be a common household one, but soon will be. Put her with an equally comedic and charming leading man, New Girl‘s Jake Johnson, and the chemistry is set. Then, combine a fresh storyline with a distinct vision from first time director Jenée LaMarque and you’ve got The Pretty One, a story of identity, loss and a young adult’s coming of age. The Standard Hotel in West Hollywood is where I sit down with Kazan and LaMarque and talk to them about their experience making the film. We begin:
I CAN SEE IT IN THE FILM THAT YOU WERE INSPIRED BY MOVIES LIKE “LARS AND THE REAL GIRL” AND “LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE” AND THEY’RE GREAT FILMS CROWNED BY CASTING, SO WHEN YOU ARE WRITING A FILM LIKE THIS ARE YOU CASTING IT THE ENTIRE TIME?
JENÉE LAMARQUE: I wasn’t in this instance… not every actor that came in, no other actor basically did what Zoe did in terms of matching what the tone and the feel and the vibe was going to be.
DURING THE AUDITION PROCESS, I UNDERSTAND THAT YOU SAW A LOT OF PEOPLE, AND THE TWO OF YOU GETTING TOGETHER WAS SORT OF A GEOGRAPHICAL GOOD-FORTUNE. WHAT WENT ON IN THAT AUDITION?
JL: Oh, I was a huge fan of Zoe’s but she was in New York and she just happened to be in LA that week we were casting. We were about to cast someone who nobody felt 100% about, we were kinda bummed, but then we were like ‘let’s just have a couple more sessions’ and then that day (Zoe) came in. Her sense of humor and her innate comedic ability is exactly what I find so hilariously funny. I knew at that moment she was the right person for the role, I looked over at my producer Steven Berger and we locked eyes and we’re like oh, there she is. We’ve worked so hard and now it’s as easy as bringing in Zoe Kazan.
WERE YOU THINKING OF YOURSELF WHEN YOU WERE WRITING LAUREL AND AUDREY?
JL: I sort of am each of those characters; I can’t write in public because I look really funny, like I make weird faces, I cry… It would be like people watching me go to the bathroom.
DID YOU WORKSHOP THE SCRIPT AT ALL? IF SO, HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT TO TAKE IT THROUGH OTHER MINDS?
JL: That’s the most important thing, getting other people’s point of view. When you’re trying to get a specific tone and make sure what you’re trying to do is actually being executed, it’s absolutely necessary to have feedback. I started writing this film just before I started at AFI (American Film Institute, Los Angeles), I studied screenwriting, and so I was learning screenwriting as I was writing this film. I was learning how to digest feedback as I was learning to write. That was the most helpful thing, work shopping it.
ZOE, IN “RUBY SPARKS” YOU KICKED OFF A NATIONAL CONVERSATION ABOUT THE FEMALE IDENTITY AND MALE FANTASIES ABOUT IT, AND THIS IS ALSO A FILM ABOUT FEMALE IDENTITY BUT FEMALE FANTASY. DID YOU SEE “THE PRETTY ONE” AS A BOOKEND, PART OF A CONTINUEM?
ZOE KAZAN: I didn’t really think about it because it feels like such a different movie to me… I guess the thing that appealed most to me about this film was the kind of journey (Laurel) goes on. Her internal journey seemed much more important to me. This movie felt so much more like someone breaking through something; breaking through grief, breaking through an old conception of herself, breaking through her childhood into adulthood, so it didn’t really occur to me that there was thematic similarity. I feel like Jenée and I have really similar tastes so it’s not surprising to me that the film that I write and the film that she wrote would have something in common.
WITH THE TITLE OF “THE PRETTY ONE,” WAS THERE A SPECIFIC TWIN YOU HAD IN MIND THAT WAS THE PRETTY ONE, OR WAS IT SUPPOSED TO BE INTERCHANGEABLE?
JL: I think it is interchangeable in a way; I think there is irony to the title in the sense that in families and in siblings and with twins in particular, there’s a lot of labeling that goes on in terms of ‘who’s the smart one’ ‘who’s the good one’ ‘who’s the bad one’ and I think what’s happening in the film is (portraying) that it’s not about those external assessments, but how you see yourself that’s the most important thing in your life. So yeah, in some ways I think Audrey would obviously be the pretty one, but their identical twins, and it has to do more with the way she presents herself to the world. She chooses things that make her more conventionally beautiful.
ZK: There’s so much that we have no control over, and then there’s the stuff that you do have control over and that’s sort of what I feel Audrey has made the most of, she’s like plucked her eyebrows, got a good haircut, learned how to put on makeup the right way, and Laurel has made the choice to neglect herself… her not making choices is sort of an indication of her greater ambivalence about herself. I think sometimes we think of “prettiness” as being very superficial and not that important in terms of the quality of a person, but I think that when people feel happy, they look beautiful.
DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE MEMORY OF WORKING WITH JAKE JOHNSON DURING THE FILM?
JL: (Laughter) There is this scene when (Laurel and ..) are about to go on this date… and when we shot the scene (Laurel’s) in bed and he’s waking her up and then just in between shots he was just doing these weird dances and then he used to call himself the gorilla …
ZK: No, the silverback…
JL: Silverback! And so he was doing these weird dances and everyone on set just couldn’t stop laughing and we couldn’t continue on because we were all laughing so hard.
ZK: I don’t know why this is my favorite memory but we shot in this pool and it was much colder than it was supposed to have been, there was supposed to be two scenes in this pool and we shot the first one and I’m just a hypothermic person, I’m never warm, I’m cold right now…
(Laughter)
I couldn’t stop shaking, I couldn’t act! Jenée was like, ‘we have to move you out of the pool, obviously’ and Jake stayed in the pool so that we could still tie the scene to the pool… (During the scene) we kiss and every time we kissed his face would be so cold and I just felt so much love for him for certainly taking one for the team. He did that so without drama… he was totally my hero in that moment.
IS THIS A GOOD DATE MOVIE?
ZK: Yeah!
JL: I think it’s a great date movie! I think there’s an authenticity to their relationship and an element of fun, and in the end, even though it’s dealing with this heavy subject matter, it’s a crowd pleaser.
