Live online chat with “Flipped” director Rob Reiner and actress Madeline Carroll

On Thursday, August 26 at 7–8PM EDT, Flipped director Rob Reiner and actress Madeline Carroll will be online for a live-chat on Facebook. You can find out more here. Here’s a post I did a few weeks ago about the movie:

Patrick Goldstein with a great feature on Rob Reiner and his new movie Flipped:

It’s no secret that Hollywood is obsessed with ‘80’s nostalgia. After all, we’ve already seen the decade reenacted in “Hot Tub Time Machine” and re-envisioned through remakes of “The A Team” and “The Karate Kid,” with the prospect of a big-screen version of “21 Jump Street” and a new sequel to “Ghostbusters” still to come.

If there were any filmmaker who was at the top of his game in the ’80s, it’s Rob Reiner, who made his audacious directing debut with “This Is Spinal Tap,” which was followed by such ’80s classics as “Stand by Me,” “The Princess Bride” and “When Harry Met Sally.” But the 1990s (at least after 1995’s “An American President”) and the 2000s didn’t exactly burnish Reiner’s filmmaking reputation. In fact, it’s been a long time since Reiner directed a must-see film. So when a colleague recommended that I see Reiner’s new film, “Flipped,” due out Aug. 6 from Warner Bros. Pictures, I dawdled, delayed and dithered before finally heading out to a screening.

Much to my surprise, the film (adapted by Reiner and Andrew Scheinman from a popular young adult novel written by Wendelin Van Draanen) represents a real comeback for Reiner, who, working with a stellar cast of character actors including Aidan Quinn, John Mahoney, Anthony Edwards and Penelope Ann Miller, has told the story of an unlikely romance between two mismatched 1950s-era middle-schoolers.

The premise of the movie:

The heroine of the movie is young Juli Baker, played by Madeline Carroll. Part of a family of nonconformists (her father loves to paint and never mows his lawn), Juli raises chickens and loves to sit in the top of the neighborhood sycamore tree, soaking up the view. She also has an unrequited crush on handsome Bryce Loski (Callan McAuliffe), who lives across the street. But everything changes when Juli begins to wonder if Bryce is just another narcissistic dolt while Bryce, who has always tried to stay as far away from Juli as possible, slowly comes to realize that there is much more to the girl next-door than meets the eye.

For me, the most fascinating thing about “Flipped” is that, even though its protagonists are awkward 8th graders, it’s a film that adults will respond to as much as kids. In fact, in an era when Hollywood couples films are either played for laughs (“Date Night”) or for thrills (“Knight and Day”), the two young middle-schoolers have a relationship that is probably more sophisticated and emotionally complex than any romantic relationship we’ve seen in a major studio film all year.

And Reiner and Scheinman, who co-wrote the screenplay, made a really interesting narrative choice:

The book takes place in the present day, but Reiner decided to set the picture in the 1950s.

“I wanted the story to feel timeless and pure, in a time before texting and Facebook,” he told me. “I thought it was important to strip away the technology so we could get at the true emotions and feelings and make it as innocent as possible. I guess you could say I wanted to make it closer to my own childhood.”

Insane to take a contemporary story and make it a period piece, right? But there’s an important creative lesson here: By setting the movie in the 50s, it helped the filmmakers, especially Reiner, resonate even more with the material. In other words, it’s a more personal film. Now whether this translates into box office success, we’ll see.

Here’s the movie’s trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/v/z9jeQIYimJU&hl=en_US&fs=1

Here is a fansite of the movie.

One final note from Goldstein’s article:

As it turns out, Reiner discovered the story when his son, then a student at the Wildwood School, brought the book home and asked his dad if they could read it together. “As I’m reading it, I started going, ‘Oh my god, I love this story as much as my son does,’ “ Reiner recalled when we had lunch recently. “My son said, ‘Dad, I think this could be a good movie.’ And he was right.”

My son Will and Rob’s son Jake were classmates at Wildwood in 5th grade. And as it turns out, Jake not only inspired Rob to read the book, but also has some time on-screen in the movie. Here is an article about Jake and his father.

The movie premieres on August 27th.

A rare opportunity for those of you outside of LA to interface with members of the Hollywood community, so go here for more information about the Thursday live-chat session with Rob Reiner and Madeline Carroll.