NYT Feature: Liz Meriwether
Nice feature in today’s NY Times on playwright and screenwriter Liz Meriwether:
These days this 28-year-old Yale graduate spends weekdays in Los Angeles preparing for the start of shooting on her first produced screenplay while writing the next one, and weekends in New York attending rehearsals for her play, “Oliver Parker!” which opens at the Cherry Lane Theater in the West Village on May 17.
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“Liz has an incredibly unique comic voice and a deep talent for finding the truth and emotionality in the most bizarre circumstances,” said Alex Timbers, who directed “Heddatron.” “She’s the whip-smart next-generation alternative to groundbreaking male writers like Chris Durang, Woody Allen and Judd Apatow.”
An unconventional coming-of-age story, “Oliver Parker!” revolves around a complicated male friendship between a 17-year-old “sexual suicide bomber” (Michael Zegen) and a depressed 60-year-old alcoholic (John Larroquette). Its characters also include a self-medicating senator battling to process her daughter’s violent death and a political aide who craves a spanking with a rolled-up copy of The Economist.
“We live in a time where everything can be talked about, but I was interested in what still can’t be talked about,” Ms. Meriwether said. “It’s about boundaries, where we draw them, and if they should be drawn there and what it means to redraw them.”
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“I love characters that are on the edge of something,” she said. “I end up always writing about people trying to connect and failing miserably, usually in a funny way. I’m pushed to these moments in people’s lives where real life does become absurd, and I think those are usually moments of grief or moments of extreme boredom or extreme anger. Or just trying to have sex with somebody.”
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Shooting just began Thursday on her untitled screenplay previously known as “Friends With Benefits.” Directed by Ivan Reitman for Paramount Pictures, the comedy about friends trying to sustain a sexual relationship free from romantic ties stars Ashton Kutcher, Natalie Portman, Kevin Kline and Greta Gerwig.
Meriwether is part of the “The Fempire,” along with Dana Fox (What Happens in Vegas), Lorene Scafaria (Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist), and Diablo Cody (Juno, “United States of Tara”).