This past weekend, I got to interview director Matt Aselton via phone about his upcoming movie GIGANTIC which opens limited April 3rd, 2009. It has become one of my favorite movies this year and check out my review. Starring Paul Dano as a salesman who wants to adopt a Chinese baby but then he falls for a lovely, quirky, but misguided Zooey Deschanel.
Director Matt Aselton was in South Africa when he gave me the holla. Here’s what went down. Thanks to specialopsmedia for making all this possible..
RS: My readers might not know you yet, would you mind telling us a bit of your background and how you got to become a filmmaker that you are today?
MA: I was born and raised in Massachusetts, I went to Williams College and studied English Literature major, but because I have photography background, I went and directed TV commercials, I was a commercial directors for many years. GIGANTIC is my first movie
RS: What’s the inspiration for GIGANTIC? I understand that eventhough you came up with the story, you didn’t write the screenplay all by yourself
MA: No, I wrote it with my friend Adam Nagata who had business executive background that’s why the business aspect that you see in the movie, it’s all his.
I had friends whose parents way much older than they are [Ed Asner's character is Paul Dano's dad] and I remember when were kids we’d always wanted to adopt another little brother.
RS: So tell us something about the development of the project or the casting process?
MA: I was friends with Paul Dano, a very talented actor, I’ve always been a big fan of his work especially the movie L.I.E. We talked about this script, and he’s actually one of the executive producers of GIGANTIC…and basically once Paul and Zooey were in, everybody else fell in. Especially John Goodman who as soon as hearing that Paul Dano was in going to be part of it, he wanted to work with Paul.
RS: What I like about GIGANTIC is the humor, you guys came up with some random hilarious dialogue and scenes..like the janitor who did the light saber moves and what’s up with Zach Galifianakis playing a homeless dude who keeps trying to beat up Paul Dano? His whole bit cracked me up.
MA: It’s funny how you mentioned that random stuff, you’re one of the few I’ve talked to who noticed that Janitor bit and found it absolutely funny. Zach’s cameo as a homeless guy, he’s like Paul’s demon, and Paul is trying to defeat his demon..whereas Zooey’s demon is her mom.. you see her briefly in this movie. I didn’t want to dwell too much on the mom or have so many scenes of her mom because I don’t wanna keep explaining too much of what’s going on..
RS: Yes, you want to provide some room for the audience to wonder, leave some room for them to sorta go off on their own afterward and discuss what they think the movie is about.. to them.
MA: Exactly.
RS: Not like how most movies these days would show some brief flashbacks at the last scene to explain every single thing of what went happen in the first hour and a half
MA: (laugh) o yeah, or they’d put in a series of montage or long chat revealing everything.
RS: Now I gotta ask you this.. since I’m a guy… and there’s this one scene where Zooey is topless, the swimming pool scene, why on earth did you guys not do a close up shot, what’s with the far out wide span, man?!
MA: (laugh).. you’re not the only one who thought that way.. one of my producers also said the same thing, he said ‘well,.. let’s see them!’ (laugh)
but I chose not to focus on that because the it would take away from,… it would be a distraction.
RS: I get it, you wouldn’t want GIGANTIC to be just another footnote on MrSkin.com
MA: That’s the last thing I want (laugh)
RS: The impression I got is that Paul and Zooey play these two characters who don’t know what they want to do in life yet and both of them have eccentric families but each is not what you’d consider a dysfunctional family.
MA: No, it’s not. The whole movie is kind of like a commentary on American life.. American nuclear family. Paul Dano or his character I should say, wants to create a family of his own, the kind that he never had.
RS: But none of them had daddy issues, as a matter of fact the dads from both sides, played by Ed Asner and John Goodman are both supportive.
MA: The main theme is that it’s a love story.. It’s about how exciting it is to meet and terrifying to meet somebody for the first time but as we all know, meeting somebody we finally like, we finally have actual feelings for..could be a scary thing too.. it’s like o f*ck! what am I going to do now?! How am I supposed to react to this?! To Zooey’s character it’s like.. now I like this guy and I have to confront everything.. that I face everything.
RS: Who’s Chinese baby was it? Did you borrow the baby from your neighbor?
MA: The baby belongs to couple who living in Virginia. They’d still send me pictures of showing the baby growing up.
RS: Are you working on your next project?
MA: Yeah, me and Adam are working on our next script, if I tell you the plot.. it’ll take about 40 minutes.. so for now.. it’s about the reincarnated Japanese Zookeeper (laugh)
RS: A reincarnated Japanese Zookeeper who wants to adopt a Chinese baby?
MA: (laugh) yes.. no.. that would be a bit repetitive
RS: I don’t like sequels anyway… so if Marvel comes up to you and offers you to direct one of the Superhero projects, would you do it?
MA: I don’t know.. making movies is so much work.. and besides, I was never really big on Superheroes.. except for GREEN HORNET maybe.
