'The Wackness': Not Your Average Pot Movie
By Emily Christianson, Hollywood.com Staff
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Thursday, July 03, 2008
Jonathan Levine
Writer/Director
Hollywood.com: You had to come up with pretty large quantities of marijuana for the film. What works best for bricks of fake weed?
Jonathan Levine: If you want good looking weed you get Coltsfoot. If you want schwag you get a different kind. That was really funny actually. They would come up to you right before we were going to put it there and go, “I have this, this, this and this.” You're just like, “Wow.” We had one guy who was really good at rolling joints with the Coltsfoot and so if on one take it went down too far and we ran out of backups he'd have to do it really quickly. So a lot of people put their skills to good use here.
HW: How do you direct a stoned or high performance with an actor like Sir Ben Kingsley?
JL: Oh, God, I don't. I just stay out of his way…I tried to teach him about bong hits. That was the extent of my direction.
HW: Who would have thought Sir Ben would ever hook up with an Olsen twin.
JL: Yeah. The movie is a lot more than that, but as a film fan I think it's pretty cool and if that's what gets people to go see the movie then more power to them…The thing with MK too is that she's a really good actress and I think that she just has a lot of other kind of stuff she brings to the table…I've seen her on Weeds and she's awesome and she's got a genuine kind of sweetness to her and she's not afraid to be goofy.
HW: This movie is surprisingly nostalgic for those of us in high school in the 90s. Were you worried it was too early for a throwback to 1994?
JL: I started writing it and I thought that maybe it was a little too early and maybe no one was going to feel it. Then I thought about how it resonated with me, thinking back to that time and I thought that this would really be something that strikes people. I think it's very interesting. I think that a lot of people really, really respond to that nostalgia. I'm happy.