While many admired Hoge's honest script, no one was willing to give the go-ahead to get production underway until the script landed at Kevin Spacey's Trigger Street Productions. Trigger Street is devoted to developing projects from new filmmakers, and Spacey was moved by Hoge's story. Spacey not only supported the project but took a role in the film as Leland's (Ryan Gosling) father.
INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN SPACEY AND MATTHEW HOGE:
Matthew, did you go to work at the correctional institute looking for a script?
MATTHEW HOGE: I went in to pay the rent because I needed a job. I
just knew I didn't want to work in Hollywood. I didn't want to answer an agent's phone. Bu it was very, very easy to get hired because there's
such a shortage of teachers and so I felt like I wanted a way I could teach a few days a week and then have time to write. I also felt like I'll probably meet people I wouldn't meet any other way, and that turned out to be the case. And I think it took me probably six months of being there, overcoming that kind of initial shock, because it was just so different than anything else I'd experienced.
I would hear about a kid's file before meeting them, or weeks after meeting them, but I was never there to witness the act that was now defining who they are. And I'm intersecting with them at this very different point where I'm just seeing a kid. I'm seeing a kid who's saying, “I really miss my mother. Can you please help me improve the grammar of the letter I want to write to my judge to improve my conditions, or thank you for teaching me square roots, or I drew a funny picture of you.” And that's how I interacted with them. I think that was almost immediate, the shock that this was not at all what I thought it would be. There were times when it was sort of harrowing, but by and large, it was like running any other classroom. And [there was] just this incredible range. I mean, you had two kids in a classroom who couldn't speak English and then at the other end you had a kid on the Harvard track before he did whatever he did - and everything in between - so it was just a juggling act to try to keep everybody involved, and try to give them something.
It took me a while to feel like I knew it well enough to write it honestly and respectfully, and try to communicate the story. I felt it was an important one because those kids, most people know about them by the one article that comes out in the paper that says so-and-so shot at a kid in a failed drive-by shooting and killed a 4 year-old. Or so-and-so shot up his high school or killed his mother, and that's it. They are a monster, they're not like us, we're going to lock them up for 100 years and we're done with them and that's all we're going to get from them on that story. I got to get past that. I'd actually see them for what they were, which is a human being just like me.
How much faith do you have in the platforming strategy of the film's release?
KEVIN SPACEY: Well, I happen to [believe] that the traditional form of distribution is probably going to change in the next 10 years. I think that tentpole movies or films released on 2000 screens or 3000 screens or 4000 screens or whatever it is, are the films in which studios put resources behind in hopes that they'll get not just their money back, but everybody else's money at the same time. I think that platforming in a lot of cases depends on the campaign, and it depends on the enthusiasm, to a large degree, of the critics. If critics get behind your film, then that encourages studios to get behind the film and not drop it. And we've been quite encouraged because while the film is a challenging movie, we've always had a lot of faith in it, and now that we've seeing the reactions that we're getting from the test screenings, it's very encouraging. I hope that it's encouraging Paramount Classics to say, “You know, this is worth continuing our idea of rolling this out. We're going to try to get the word of mouth out about the film and we believe we'll talk about the film in these kind of terms.” I think it really depends on the degree to which the studio is behind the film at the end of the day, and if they're able to get people to come out.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Interviews with Chris Klein & Jena Malone / Ryan Gosling
"The United States of Leland" Photos, News & Credits
