Interview: Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber — “(500) Days of Summer”, “The Spectacular Now” (Part 3)

Screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber have written scripts that have made the Black List a remarkable 5 times, broke in with the hit indie film (500) Days of Summer, and have become go-to guys for adapting novels having written screenplays for The Spectacular Now (to be released this summer) and The Fault in Our Stars (pre-production), and writing high profile projects Where‘d You Go, Bernadette and Rules of Civility. We are most fortunate to have them as our ‘guests’ all this week.

Today in Part 3, Scott and Michael round out a discussion on (500) Days of Summer, then provide background on their new movie The Spectacular Now [Release date: August 2, 2013].

Scott M: There are some ambiguities in the story. For example, Summer’s on the bench with Tom at Day 488. Is that actually real or is that some fantasy that Tom might have been having that he needed in order to resolve their breakup?

Michael: Yeah, we’ve always argued about that. It’s been a funny thing. It’s a fun argument. Because I believe she’s there. I’m not sure what Scott will say. I believe she’s there, but I will give you that in life, most of the time we are not that lucky to get that kind of closure.

Scott N: It’s the one scene in the movie with no basis in fact. At all. Even the cartoon birds are more real. That said, if you believe in the idea of closure, that scene is closure. That’s the scene where he can move on. Maybe she’s there, maybe she isn’t, but she says the things he needs to hear to get on with his life.

Scott M: There’s another ambiguous moment which is at the very end. Tom has gone through this process from a romanticized view of love to more of a realistic perspective, I guess you could say. Then he meets Autumn, he asks her out, and the script flips to the #1. So it’s like you saying: A, this is a new day in Tom’s life, a new way of having a relationship. Or is it B, this is Tom on the path to replicating the same behavior he exhibited with Summer.

Michael: Yeah. I love that question. Honestly, I don’t know the answer. You never know. Will he make the same mistakes? New mistakes? Will it be happily ever after? I don’t know. I have a girlfriend now but I was making a lot of mistakes for so many years, so I don’t know. I think it’s a really subtle thing to talk about. I don’t know if he ends up with Autumn.

Scott N: Exactly. You want him to have learned his lesson but who knows. It was Joe’s idea to look directly at the camera at the end, which really doubles down on the idea that this movie is entirely taking place in this character’s head. Hopefully, having witnessed this tumultuous time in his life, he’s as aware as we are that he needs to grow up. But the question of “will he” remains.

Scott M: I just got done reading a script for another one of your projects, “The Spectacular Now.” A terrific read.

Michael: Oh, thank you.

Scott M: Here’s a logline accompanying the script when it made The Black List in 2009. It says, “Hard partying high school senior’s life changes when he meets a shy insecure girl”. The protagonist is Sutter Keely. I saw him as a postmodern Ferris Bueller. Does that ring true to you?

Michael: Definitely. Again it goes back to the first time Scott and I met and liking the same movies. It wasn’t just great romantic comedies but I loved the work of John Hughes and they’re the movies I grew up on. They felt real to me. I mean, even at times when they get silly, they still felt real to me. Even in the silly moments there was euphoria. I don’t know if a kid can actually lead a parade in Chicago but the spirit of it is what it felt like at certain moments to be a teenager.

It’s funny how many of our projects, among the ones we most care about, are reactions to how they’ve been making a certain kind of movie. And it was cool that “Perks of Being a Wallflower” found an audience last year and did so well.

Because they really need to start making high school movies or teenage movies that are honest, that feel real. And there’s totally a place for vampires and witches and wizards and superpowers. And clearly obviously those movies do really well and people really like them. But for a while it seemed like they stopped making the ones that didn’t sugarcoat being a teenager or the other way of the heightened shenanigans of American Pie, which, by the way, I loved the first American Pie. But we were trying for something a little different. We didn’t want to shy away from the emotional complexity of being a teenager.

Scott M: And so were you bringing that mindset when you read the novel by Tim Tharp or did that come out of reading the book?

Michael: Scott and I have only talked about it. The same way we were talking about romantic comedies for a while before Summer we were always talking about, “Why don’t they make a few movies like they used to”, and it was the same kind of thing. We were very critical movie goers. We love movies. We just don’t go to the movies as much as we used to. I don’t think we started off thinking this way but it evolved into, “Let’s write the movies we want to go see”.

We got the book in Fall of 2008 and we both just fell in love with it. It just felt honest and funny and it touched a range of emotions. And it was what we were looking for. It was really a wonderful book. I don’t know if you’ve read it. It was short listed for the national book award for YA and deservedly so. It’s really a wonderful book.

Scott M: There’s a line from the Hollywood Reporter which resonated with my own experience when I was reading the script. The quote is, “It says a lot for the depth of the writing and the characterization to acknowledge that it takes the entire film to fully get a handle on Sutter Keely.” It’s interesting because here’s this fun, good-natured kid going around ‘rescuing’ other people, and yet he’s got this problem with alcohol, he avoids talking about his past or his future, in effect he’s a mystery. Was it a struggle for you to create a sense of connection to the character while embracing this idea that in some ways, Sutter is going to be a mystery for much of the movie?

Michael: No, a lot of that was in the book. That attitude of “live in the now,” that southern answer to anything complicated is, “Let’s just have fun.” Really, Tim Tharp does such a great job with that that we understood that. I, for one, did not enjoy my teenage years. They were very difficult in a lot of ways, and got it. I totally understood the emotional labyrinth of avoiding problems at school, problems at home, problems with money, problems with girls, problems with how you felt about yourself.

I totally got it. I did not have a drinking problem, but I understood that period of your life, and a lot of the choices Sutter made, which certainly helped as we just dug in on the book. There was so much good stuff in the book. We couldn’t keep everything, which is always a hard part of when you have a great book. Then given some budget constraints, there were even some things we wrote that didn’t end up in the movie.

You read a draft, there was a hotel party, and it’s kind of lame. He decides, “Screw this,” and then he ends up in a hot tub with an ex‑girlfriend. We couldn’t afford to do that scene. That’s the process. We could’ve had a lot more if we wanted to do a PG‑13 version. We stuck to our guns always. This was going to be an R‑rated movie, not because of T&A. We just wanted to be honest.

It’s been really interesting with some of our other projects learning, if somebody’s drinking onscreen, having kids drink is a bigger problem for the ratings board, we’re told, then teenage sex. Certainly in something like “The Spectacular Now,” we could not shy away from the drinking. We were not going to insert some metaphor for drinking. We wanted to be honest and not flinch.

Scott M: Well, that’s a key part, isn’t it, of his character, that it’s a way of living in the now, in that fog of the now. Part of his drinking ties into that, right?

Michael: Yeah, it is sort of a prism, if you will, of his way of looking at the world. You could probably do a similar version of this that is drugs, and we could do a similar version with…it’s why, I hope, lots of people, young and old, will relate to this character, because for most of us, being a teenager was really complicated. You didn’t need to have a drinking problem to understand the need to avoid all these complex emotions as you are becoming a young adult.

Scott M: This idea of living in the now reminded me of Ram Dass and his book “Be Here Now,” that idea about being fully present within the present. And yet, what’s so intriguing about your protagonist in this story is, he’s in the present, but it’s really more about trying to avoid both the past and the future.

Michael: Yeah, yeah. I think the past is filled with pain that he doesn’t want to acknowledge. I want to be careful here not to spoil for anyone who hasn’t read or seen it, but you almost wonder, is it avoidance of dealing with the future because unconsciously he knows his dad really is a loser and he’s going to end up like him. The odds are stacked against this kid. But thinking about the future is more pain. Thinking about the past is definitely pain.

Scott M: He comes to this wonderful little observation in the script I read, where he’s writing this application letter to college, in which he says…

Michael: Which was one of the things, by the way, I should add, that was not in the book.

Scott M: Oh, that wasn’t.

Michael: No, the book started with the whole Walter business. I think it’s just a simple narration, and it was fine. It began with this crazy day that leads to him getting dumped by his first girlfriend, and Marc Webb, who was the first director involved‑‑we were having a phone call‑‑was really pushing on this, like, “Let’s find a way to really try to hit the ground running in the beginning and make this pop.” I don’t know where I thought of the idea, but I hated writing those goddamn essays. Where I went to college, it was Syracuse, but where I applied and where I went was, “Who wants the fewest essays?” We played this, “Can I recycle the same essay the most number of times?” I was not a good student. I didn’t have SAT prep classes and tutors of how to get into college. I had none of that stuff. For me it was, “How can I just get this fucking process over with?”

I was thinking back to that, and that’s where the idea came from. “Oh, those damn essays” is a fun way to get in this character’s head early on. Just the fact that he’s dropping F‑bombs in his college essay, you learn a lot right there.

Scott M: It’s a great setup, because you call it back at the very end, in nice bookends.

Michael: Yeah, we were really pleased with how that part of it turned out.

Tomorrow in Part 4, Scott and Michael round out their discussion of The Spectacular Now.

Here is the Hollywood Reporter movie review.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

Please stop by comments to thank Michael and Scott for taking the time for the interview and post any follow-up questions you may have.

Scott and Michael are repped by CAA and Kaplan/Perrone.