[There are] a couple of smaller, supporting roles in the film who are more composites from like the kids I was actually interacting with. I think it’s a fascinating world, to me, the questions that people don’t want to ask about these kids who are caught up in gangs. And it’s like we are so afraid of them, we want to lock them up for as long as we can. We feel like no good could ever come from them. First of all, they are just kids. And secondly, these dangerous questions like, “Is there anything good about being in a gang?” - we don’t even want to ask that. But the truth is like the loyalty that I saw these kids display, and what they would do for each other and the depths of the connection that they felt for their friends who are part of their gang was really, really amazing, and I thought admirable – and something you don’t see in the world usually. You don’t see that kind of loyalty or that kind of deep connection. Like, “I will go to jail for 20 years for you because you are my friend.” I think that really speaks to a side of these kids that we just sort of dismiss.
How do you address that?
I hope that this film does something to change the just view all of the kids that commit these crimes out there. You hear about Andy Williams, or you hear about a gang shooting in San Diego or LA and this bullet goes awry and kills a kid. The papers just write about the triggerman as being a monster, as a kid who is something other than human. And I think that if this film does something to sort of challenge the way people react to those stories and the way those stories are written about and talked about, then I’ll feel like I’ll have done something. I will always feel like I’ve benefited more from my interactions with those kids than they ever did from me. So I’m hoping the film does something to sort of tip the scales a little bit.
When you were writing the script, did your opinion of why characters did what they did change? Did you know from the start the ‘why’ wasn’t the important thing?
I think that I knew that from the get-go, that I didn’t want it to be about an easy why. I didn’t want it to be about boiling it down to something really simple like the kid listens to Marilyn Manson or the kid plays violent video games or whatever it is, all the reasons that we are kind of grasping for. I think it took me a while getting into the script, of really writing that voice, to sort of understand why that character of Leland would be capable of what happened. I think that was very much a processing of finding it. Thought the film doesn’t give you a why, I think it does give you the reasons. It allows you to look at the incidents that happened to this character in a very short period of time that lead up to this crime. So if it’s not a satisfying ‘why’ like you get at the end of mysteries, you still have a sense of, “I understand why this character committed this act.”
Did the supporting characters’ motivations change during the writing process, or are they pretty set from the beginning?
I always start off with a pretty good blueprint. I kind of put note cards up on the wall and I have a sense of where I want characters to go. But I think you have to always allow for them to surprise you and for characters to say to you, “No, I wouldn’t do this, I’d actually do that.” You have to sort of give them that opportunity because I think if you try to plan things out too much, it doesn’t seem like human behavior. The characters, as they go along, they tell you whether or not they would actually do the thing that you had planned them to do. Sometimes it does happen where you just realize it just don’t fit at all and you have to evolve.
PAGE 3: Matthew Hoge on the Movie's Title and Creating Characters
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Interview with Ryan Gosling
Chris Klein and Jena Malone Interview
"The United States of Leland" Photos, Credits, and Movie News
