Finding the poetry within a high-concept romantic comedy premise, David Gordon Green follows up his sublime George Washington with All the Real Girls, an ambitious, moving and highly personal take on youthful romance. Scott Macaulay talks with Green.

Paul Schneider and Zooey Deschanel in All the Real Girls. PHOTO: KAREY WILLIAMS

Why is this guy so hot?" an L.A. agent asked me about David Gordon Green.

As this was a recent conversation, the agent wasn’t referring to the success of Green’s 2001 debut feature, George Washington, which scored on many year-end critics’ lists and announced Green as a major new talent in American independent cinema. No, I suspect the agent was referring to Green’s post—George Washington successes. Although George Washington grossed only $241,816 in its domestic theatrical release, Green subsequently scored a film to rewrite and direct for Ed Pressman and Terence Malick’s company, and he’s also landed one of Hollywood’s most sought-after open directing assignments: a film adaptation of John Kennedy Toole’s classic Southern novel A Confederacy of Dunces.

And then, of course, there’s his new film forthcoming from Sony Classics, All the Real Girls, from his original script.

Indeed, then, why is this guy so hot?

Sitting across from Green as he eats a pulled-pork sandwich, I’m reminded of what makes him a compelling figure in today’s film world. Simply, Green in person casually projects a refreshing vision of the possibilities of cinema – a vision that is both artistic and accessible. And with the wide-screen hopefulness of George Washington, he secured a devoted following of critics who see him as an alternative to today’s indie ironists and sensationalists..

With his new film, Green stretches his range further. While its premise – a small-town womanizer gets his comeuppance when he falls for a virgin – may read like a Weitz brothers high concept, in Green’s hands it’s become a mysterious ode to the complexities of young love. Radically reshaping his original script in shooting and postproduction and reuniting with much of the George Washington crew, including d.p. Tim Orr, lensing again in widescreen format, Green has tackled more accessible subject matter while retaining the idiosyncrasies of his unique voice.

All the Real Girls premieres in Competition at the Sundance Film Festival.

FILMMAKER: What made you want to tackle as your second movie something like All the Real Girls, which on paper sounds like a romantic comedy but which actually feels quite different?

David Gordon Green: All the Real Girls was an idea that Paul [Schneider] and I had maybe five years ago – to do a relationship movie that was honest, believable, awkward, funny, sad and beautiful, like all relationships should be. We were looking at movies that were supposed to be about "us" – about the points we were at in our own lives – and we weren’t identifying with them; there was nobody in [these movies] to relate to. So we thought, let’s go out there with a heavy hand and show people how it feels when you get your gut in a knot. Let’s try to capture that point in our lives. We’re not older filmmakers looking back nostalgically; we were trying to do something that was contemporary for us but also timeless for the audience. We looked at movies like The Last Picture Show and Splendor in the Grass, movies about young people making decisions, trying to relate to friends and family, and we tried to find what is meaningful about these movies.

FILMMAKER: Did you approach the script attempting to create a very structured story, or was it more about exploring ideas of character?

GREEN: [Paul and I] had music, atmospheres, thoughts and feelings in our heads, and I first wrote kind of a structured version of those organic feelings. The second part of the process was writing a script that would make sense to an audience and be something that people were going to want to see. After making George Washington, I wanted people to buy tickets to my movies. Regardless of how films are received critically, ultimately you want people to buy tickets – take a date, buy popcorn, rent them on videotape. I wanted to write something that had marketability but then put a spin on it that hadn’t been done before. And if you’re making a movie about young love, you’re automatically working in a marketable genre. If you are dealing with characters in their late teens or early 20s in America, you’ve got something that people can identify with. Unfortunately, there are a lot of cultures and age groups that are neglected in [that demographic], and I wanted to bring them into the story too. I wanted to deal with more than just this one [protagonist]. I wanted to see what his friends were like, what his family was like, who his uncle was, who his niece was. We finally wound up with a script that had all these characters in this place, and it was structured in a readable, digestible way.

FILMMAKER: I read the script, and when I saw the final cut, I was surprised. It’s very different – so much so that the first 40 pages of the script aren’t even in the final film. When did you make the decision to diverge so much from the screenplay?

GREEN: The production was a very organic process. We cast the movie with people we knew would bring a lot of elements from their own lives to the characters, and really quickly we started listening to our instincts. In rehearsals we found where the valuable moments were in the piece, and then we had to make a decision. We had everything scheduled, budgeted and organized, but were we going to stick to the page, to the script, to the structure – everything that was preplanned? Or were we going to provide an environment where we could let loose a bit and go with where our guts told us to go? So we listened. When the actors had an idea of what they should wear or where the scene should take place or whom the scene should be with, we listened to them. The movie took on a life of its own during the production.

FILMMAKER: And then what happened in post?

GREEN: We had so much to play with, so many ways we could go with it, so we just [began to] put everything together in the most logical, obvious way that we could.

FILMMAKER: Linearly?

GREEN: Yes. But then we decided to find the most original, unique perspective we could, because again, we’re working in a genre where this story has been told. We had [in our assembly] a unique group of characters in a unique place with a lot of unique feeling. So we broke it down and took out everything that we’d seen before, that felt clichéd, that was derivative of anything else. We wanted to make a movie that was just about those unique magical moments.

FILMMAKER: How much of what you took out were the beats of a more classical narrative?

GREEN: A lot. I don’t know. It’s hard to put a percentage on it. We tried to find the honest moments and then link them together logically. We lost a lot of exposition. Now you don’t necessarily know where these characters are coming from or how they relate to each other emotionally, but you feel it and you wonder about it. We cut the scene in which the two potential lovers see each other for the first time, because it wasn’t interesting; you see that in every other movie. The decision made early on was, let’s begin this movie with their first kiss.

FILMMAKER: What were the factors influencing that decision? The performance of the actors, or an idea of how you wanted your narrative to be shaped?

GREEN: One difficulty I had as a director was directing actors in an environment where there’s supposed to be loud music playing. And [this type of setting] was where I introduced the characters in the script. [When we shot that scene], even though there wasn’t music playing, [the actors] had to enunciate [loudly], so when you put the loud music over them [in post], they would have the right vocal levels. It was a difficult thing for me to direct, and it was evident in post that there was a lack of sincerity in the direction. So, [the scene] had to go, because I wanted to see these characters [for the first time] when they were being true to themselves, when their performances were 100 percent, and when my directorial process was in control.

FILMMAKER: Those kinds of choices have really altered the movie’s conception of time. The film is pretty aggressive in flashing forward and backward – playing more subjectively with chronology.

GREEN: Again, the organic environment that we established in the production, we did again in postproduction. We’d set up a character in one scene, and I wouldn’t be interested necessarily in the payoff for that character in the next scene but what just felt like the right place to cut to. And that could have been based on something as simple and pretentious as a different color scheme to the production design or going from a semi-matching two-shot to another two-shot.

FILMMAKER: Did you ever have a point where the producers or financiers said, "Where are the first 40 pages?"

GREEN: Oh, yeah. All the time. And I’d show it to them, and they’d say, "We understand exactly why you didn’t use it."

FILMMAKER: You made George Washington yourself with a small group of people, and I suspect you developed a more intuitive, autodidactic way of making movies that worked for that movie. How much of that idiosyncratic working style were you able to maintain on this movie, which is a $2.5-million production, with financiers and distribution in place from Sony Classics?

GREEN: The only reason that’s a difficult question to answer is because as part of the organization of the project, I wanted to be shielded from certain political issues.

FILMMAKER: What kinds of issues?

GREEN: Financial issues. I wasn’t heavily involved in the budgeting of this [movie]. I knew what I wanted to achieve creatively and the environment I wanted to work in, and then I left it to the line producer and the producers to take care of a lot of the issues. Once you start working with agents, producers, managers and attorneys, everything has to be legal – and that’s an enormous process that creativity does nothing for. It’s just a matter of paperwork, phone calls, stress and schedules, and I didn’t want to be concerned with [those things]. I just wanted to know that on November 1, I was going to start filming a movie with this cast and crew. And the crew was almost exactly the same crew as George Washington.

FILMMAKER: Okay, so how much of the way of working that you’ve had on Real Girls and George Washington do you now expect to be able to maintain as you make even more movies?

GREEN: Well, ideally, you work towards a consistent and realistic creative and financial evolution. And that means [starting with] a project like George Washington, in which nobody got paid, but we’re taking big steps in our careers and becoming the heads of departments when we should be beginning as the assistant to the assistant to the assistant. The next step is to continue working, start getting paid, find more ambitious ways to approach your projects and execute them as ambitiously as you can. And then make a career out of this as you grow up and have more responsibilities in your life.

FILMMAKER: Tell me about your concept of the second-unit footage, which is really striking.

GREEN: My friend Adam Stone did a lot of the second unit. I said, "Go get as much ‘pretty’ as you can," and Adam would hike off with the camera in his backpack and come back with crazy stuff. Sometimes he’d drive to Tennessee or West Virginia and find places. There was incredible stuff we didn’t use, like lakes that had dried up and were full of houseboats sunk into the mud – stuff that would blow your mind.

FILMMAKER: A lot of the second unit is kind of time-lapse or accelerated photography. And a lot of the rhythms of the movie as a whole are much slower…

GREEN: It was kind of counterintuitive – the faster music has slower images, and the slower music has faster images. I like to play kind of counter to the natural instinctive rhythms.

FILMMAKER: Where do you live now?

GREEN: Nowhere. I have a bag. I haven’t stayed more than a week anywhere in five years now. It’s quite ridiculous. I spend a lot of time with relatives and friends in Texas and North Carolina, and now Los Angeles and New York a lot.

FILMMAKER: All the Real Girls could have been set in New York, L.A., San Francisco – anywhere, really. What does the environment you shoot in do to your subject matter? What part of what becomes the subject of one of your movies is really a function of the environment it is set in?

GREEN: Well, I’m not into environments that are full of Foot Lockers, 7-Elevens and Starbucks. I found a place in North Carolina that I’m comfortable in. The atmosphere is timeless and attractive, and the community is welcoming. If I’m making a movie on a street corner, I want the people to want me there. I don’t want to have to be looking at my clock waiting for the cops to come. It’s nice to be in a warm place, and North Carolina is that.

FILMMAKER: How have you managed to maintain your sense of idealism? You had a critically successful first film, but you’ve also been around the business aspects of the movie business enough to become just a little jaded.

GREEN: I don’t feel any different. I feel like there’s a level of reality that you just have to accept. It’s about reality and ambition. My ambition says to try new things and bigger projects, and some of the ideas in my head are going to be more costly movies, and there are going to have to be compromises made. But I do believe that if you are working with people you trust on any level, you can find personal satisfaction on any project.

Link: http://www.sonyclassics.com/alltherealgirls/