INTERVIEW WITH MATTHEW HOGE:
What would have happened to the project had it not landed at Kevin Spacey's Trigger Street Productions?
It would be sitting on a shelf. It would be sitting on my agent’s shelf. It’s the state of American independent film today. Without people like Kevin [Spacey] who are using their bankability, their credibility as an actor, who can get $10, $15 million or $20 to act in those big studio films, without those people saying, “I want more than that. I want to help other people tell stories that it’s harder to tell,” it’s going to be really difficult to tell a story like ours in a studio system or a studio framework. Without Kevin saying, “I have faith in this script and I have faith in the director of this project,” it would languish. He gave me that immediate credibility when we started going around to actors and to financiers saying, “Here’s the script and Kevin Spacey believes in it, essentially, as a producer.” It means so much.
At the time you were taking it around to different actors, had Kevin Spacey already signed on to play a role or was he just a producer at that point?[
He was solely a producer. It wasn’t until we had financing put together that he decided to take the role on, of course to my great delight, because that’s what I’d wanted all along (laughing). But I think it was really important for him to prove that he could get a film put together and get a cast put together and get financing for a film that he wasn’t acting in.
Once he came onboard, did you expand the role of Leland’s father?
No, I think there were no changes in the script at all from the moment Kevin read the screenplay to the minute we started shooting a little more than a year later. No changes.
Would you ever have allowed anyone else to direct your script?
(Laughing) It was a package deal that wasn’t such a deal for a lot of people. They had a script that they saw as being dark, which I have to say I never saw as being as dark as a lot of people sort of assume from reading the script. I have always seen the hope or I’ve wanted to speak about the hope that’s at the heart of this film for me. As a director who had directed things, but not anything that anyone had seen, I had no track record. That was just another good reason for people to say no at the time.
Do you consider yourself a writer who directs or a director who writes?
I think, you know, because I take writing jobs and I’ll write things for other people – I’m writing something for Curtis Hanson right now who directed “8 Mile” and “Wonder Boys” and “LA Confidential” – so I take writing jobs for hire but I would never take a directing job for hire.
It’s sort of like the job is blurred because I’m writing and I’m already thinking about how I’m going to direct it, and getting excited about that collaboration and working with people again. So they are kind of fused.
When you’re writing a project that’s just for hire, do you still feel a real personal connection to your script?
Yeah, yeah. This thing that I’m writing for Curtis is about the world of competitive Scrabble. That couldn’t be further from what I was doing but I got really, really into it. I play Scrabble like an addict now. It’s really appalling and my friends and family are horrified. I got really, really into it and connected with people who are part of that world. I think it’s inevitable. Those kinds of opportunities have come up to work on things that I don’t feel that kind of personal connection to and I just realized I couldn’t do it. I would be very, very bad at it.
Is Leland a composite character?
Actually, I’ve never met any kid like Leland. He’s more like a fictional character that I think I’ve been carrying around for awhile. One of the first things that I did in writing the script was write a journal of Leland and kind of write those thoughts out. I think that when that character kind of collided with the thoughts that I had from the experience teaching, that the idea for the film was born. But most of the kids who I interacted with were caught up in the gang world and so their stories were really different.
PAGE 2: Matthew Hoge on Character Development and Addressing Violence in Teens
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Interview with Ryan Gosling
Chris Klein and Jena Malone Interview
"The United States of Leland" Photos, Credits, and Movie News
