Last week I had a chance to interview talented actress Jess Weixler, star of the romantic comedy PETER AND VANDY which premiered at Sundance ’09 and it opens limited this weekend. Some of us remember Jess from her previous hilarious turn as the girl with toothed vagina in horror/comedy TEETH. Jess talked with me about the character and relationship of PETER AND VANDY and also about her upcoming projects, check out the complete interview after this jump…
RS: Thank you for taking the time with me today, I’ve watched PETER AND VANDY, I loved the movie but it feels very realistic, would that turn away some audiences? Some people come to the theaters to get away from real life and now they’re going to watch PETER AND VANDY and be reminded of what they go through in real life, do you think that would disappoint them in a way?
JW: I don’t know, I mean my hope is that it actually turns people on to it because there’s so many cinematic movies out there that this movie is actually not talking about most people talk about which is how awesome it is to fall in love. It’s talking about what it’s like to live through love. I think that’s what makes it realistic. Usually the cinematic part is the butterflies, and what’s going to happen but then what do you do and ‘ok here’s the love of my life, I guess’ What are we gonna do with this over the course of time?
RS: Loved you in TEETH by the way, that was a hilarious horror/comedy, you were hilarious in that movie
JW: Thank you
RS: How did it feel, the transition, from something like TEETH to a romantic comedy/drama like PETER AND VANDY?
JW: It’s pretty different, I feel really blessed that it’s really different as it is, I feel really blessed that Jay the director trusted me to do it, cause he had never seen me do anything like this before and sorta passed me on a meeting but we had a meeting together and I’m glad we got along, at the end of it, I mean, Our real life was actually cinematic because I was late for something and running to the cab, I lost my shoe and it was raining and Jay found the shoe in the rain and I put it on my foot as I got on the cab. It was far more cinematic than the things in the movie which are more, ya know, dealing with real life. I’m proud that he trusted me enough to think that I was the right Vandy, and then he proceeded to go to L.A. to try to find my Peter
RS: This is Jay DiPietro’s feature directorial debut. Did you have any doubts entering this project knowing that it’s directed by a playwright who never made a feature before?
JW: It was actually nice that he had done it as a play because he cared about it so much, he spent a lot of time with it, had a lot of experiences with the material. He was never giving us line readings to pushing us into doing what he did to be very much went off of the chemistry that Jason and I sorta naturally had together. But because he loved these people so much, and he was really rooting for this couple, it made working on it a pleasure because everybody was intimately involved. Everybody on the set wanted the couple to make it even if they were really flawed (laugh)
RS: What was the attraction between PETER AND VANDY. What about PETER that your character VANDY found so fascinating?
JW: I think that she would never have described Peter as the love of her life, but he just sort of kept the big chemistry was powering a lot of her decision making and he was so.. it’s sorta what she loved and hated about him. He admitted his flaws so easily, didn’t try to act like somebody he wasn’t. He was kind of this bumbling disaster so much of the time and she loved that he was letting himself be like that but at the same time hoping that he would grow up and act more like a man more often which is where I think a lot of the conflict came in. She did want him to mature, and to feel more confident. She wanted him to be more confident in himself. That struggle with maturing into being a real man and a woman in a relationship, it’s where a lot of those coming from. A lot of insecurity but especially Peter was written with more insecurity and Vandy is sort of hidden under a veil of OCD (laugh)
RS: To me, their rocky relationship seems like the stuff that I think a couple should get through before they get married because often times people go into marriage without getting used to the arguments yet, it’s all lovey dubby, so when they do get into the argument part, they’re not ready, they get frustrated and they file for divorce, do you agree with my way of looking at it.
JW: I definitely don’t have any advice for anyone cause I don’t know what the hell I’m doing but I would think a relationship that takes course over many years, whether you’re married or not married, it’s about being committed to each other. It’s so easy to neglect someone when you’ve been with them for a long time because you’re not surprised often anymore. So many relationships suffer from neglect. They’re sort of in that place where they’ve been together for like forever and it’s like they’re each other’s favorite pair of shoes but not always appreciating each other the way they should or paying attention to each other the way they should because they figure they know everything already
RS: Is that what you’re hoping the audience will get by watching this movie?
JW: I hope so, I hope it makes people feel they’re not so alone. And that it is about what it means to live with love. Like how do you live your life being in love with somebody and not just fall in love with somebody because falling in love, at least to me, is just like a wonderful thing to do but actually living your life with somebody is extraordinarily more difficult and I hope it makes people feel less alone because it just seems inevitable, it’s going to be really hard, you’re going to keep coming up against the very blocks of each other, having problems.
RS: I don’t mean this in a bad way but the non-linear timeline and some of the themes kind of reminded me of another movie that opened also during Sundance, what would you say to people who think ‘o this is just another more dramatic version of 500 DAYS OF SUMMER!’ ?
JW: (laugh) We didn’t even know that movie existed when we went to Sundance but I would say the main differences are 500 DAYS OF SUMMER is like what I was saying, it’s about falling in love, very cinematic, it’s essentially 500 Days of summer, it tells you what day they’re on, what’s happening, where they’re in. You really have to watch PETER AND VANDY because it’s not about 500 DAYS OF SUMMER at all; it’s a completely different movie. It’s about years. It’s about many years with the person you love and the audience hopefully can kind of tell what year they’re in because they get it ‘o that is what you’re like when you’re in your fourth year’ or ‘that is what it’s like to be in the third year’ I don’t know, maybe I should ask you if you felt this way, if you could tell when were in our beginning stages, when we were questioning if we were gonna stay together at all, if you could sorta tell without being told where you were in the story
RS: I think the timeline that jumps around from present to past to present again surprisingly helps in making me understand what goes on
JW: That’s what we hope, that the scenes inform each other and that they inform each other on a very deep level about what it means to live your life and not just what it means to fall in love
RS: So correct me if I’m wrong here but did PETER AND VANDY end up together?
JW: (laugh) We actually think that they did end up together cause some people but it’s up to the audience to decide cause some people leave the movie and like ‘o I fall in love with my wife all over again, we’ve been through this stuff but we’re still like rooting for each other, we want this to work’ and others were like ‘o they’re not going to make it, there’s too many issues, they get on each other’s nerve’ it’s really funny that you said that because some people are like ‘o they’re totally still together’ and some people are like ‘o no they break up’
RS: The reason why I thought they didn’t end up together was because PETER told VANDY ‘I have to be with you’ and usually when you put the word ‘Have’ instead of ‘want’ you leave room for insecurity, and that might turn VANDY off, the fact that PETER felt like he couldn’t be himself without VANDY around.
JW: It’s open to interpretation, it could be ‘I have to be with you because you’re made for me and I’m made for you, we’re the right fit’ or like you said that you have to be with somebody because you’re.. but I think, I think, as Vandy (laugh) he’s just just so in love with her, he doesn’t wanna be with somebody else, he wants to her to be his life partner and Vandy interpreted it that way but it’s an extremely flawed relationship so as Jess, I’m not altogether sure they should be a couple but I’m totally rooting for them and I hope that they make it but I’m not sure, they’re definitely not an obvious yes after years.
RS: What can you tell us about your next project or if there’s a project that’s been offered to you that you’re thinking about doing?
JW: I just finished a movie with Willem Defoe, I shot in Italy, it’s sorta like a film noir movie, so I’m excited to see how that turns out. The title is A WOMAN and I’m about to start something with Joshua Leonard from Humpday and Mark Webber. It’s based on a short story an article by T. Boyle in the New Yorker and that one will be called THE LIE, we’re going to start shooting that in about 2 weeks. We’re going to see how it turns out
RS: So I take it you don’t want to do big budget projects? Do indie gigs appeal to you more as an actor?
JW: Ya know, it’s tricky because a lot of stuff that I read, that I really fall for like PETER AND VANDY, they don’t pay that well, but I do want to always feel like I can always stand by my work, the projects are interesting, not cookie cutter or playing into a type, I’m just happy I’m not typecast at the moment, I think I’m not, I don’t know.
RS: What about TEETH 2?
JW: (laugh) Ya know, maybe, but I don’t think so.. who knows
