Lou Pucci on Acting Advice from Director Mike Mills: Mills said the best piece of advice he gave Pucci was “don’t act.” Pucci said he took those words to heart and they helped shape his performance. “It was the best [advice] because - unless you’re me it’s hard to understand, I think - but I’m not a good liar. When I’m acting it’s kind of like I have to feel it, you know what I mean? I have to tell the truth to myself and really, truthfully relate to it. I can’t make it seem like I’m feeling a feeling without actually doing it. So when he said ‘don’t act,’ what it meant to me was just like let yourself feel what’s actually going on and just shut the f**k up and stop it. Like stop trying.”
Lou Pucci on Bringing His Own Personal Insecurities to the Role of Justin: “I really, on another level - like as Lou - I actually felt what Justin was feeling all the time. So I mean even though I was me, it’s very, very hard to kind of explain what actually happens because I don’t do it on purpose. It kind of just happens subconsciously because I know it has to. In order to play that part, I have to be something.
For “Chumscrubber,” the other [film] that I did, I had to feel out of place. The kid is just out of place. And on the set the entire time, I somehow got myself to forget that that was what I need to do and actually just did it. So that while I was doing it, I felt out of place. I felt like the whole time I was like, ‘Why am I in this movie? Nobody wants me here. There’s no point for me to be in this. I’m not as good an actor as any of these people. What am I doing?’ And so I just felt that way the entire time and so my character then felt that way. That’s a simpler version – that’s why I said that one. Because for Justin, it’s a lot more complicated because he’s the lead.
I felt doubtful and it’s like I was in some kind of [line] of questioning. Like what the hell is the answer? What is the answer? I don’t know. The only thing that I kept saying in my brain the whole time was that I had this one sentence that I could fall back on. Justin goes into these different characters sort of and he becomes pot smoker and he becomes Ritalin guy, so it’s kind of like he has to have a base. His base for me was this sentence: ‘I don’t know.’ That’s exactly what I kept saying to myself. And I really just felt like that character the whole time.”
Lou Pucci on Playing Justin as He Goes from Shy Introvert to Pot Smoker to Ritalin Addict: “I think there were just certain times when you know you haven’t been through a certain situation, but you can imagine what it will be like and you can sympathize with it. But since you’ve never been there, it’s just harder to imagine because you can’t remember an actual memory of your own. You have to kind of make one up."
Pucci says the most difficult scene for him to perform was the first scene involving the film’s high school debate class. “It was the first time I was supposed to give a speech in class and [Justin] runs out of the class. And for me, I didn’t feel like I was getting it, like I wasn’t showing the camera that he was freaking out. I was like, ‘I know I’m doing it in my mind but are they seeing it or not?’ So I got really kind of scared that maybe everything I was doing was in my mind and that nobody was going to see anything."
Pucci can’t remember exactly what advice writer/director Mike Mills offered him after that particular scene, but he does recall talking to Vince Vaughn after Mills called ‘cut.’ “I remember what Vince Vaughn told me. He came out and he felt sorry for me because he saw, I think, that I wasn’t getting it – or that I felt like I wasn’t getting it or something. So he came out there. He said something to me that kind of defines the different ways that we act. And this is not quoting him or anything like that, but he said something like you know, ‘You don’t have to feel it,’ or something. He said something different and I just kind of realized that that’s the different way that we are. That he can make it seem more like he’s doing something, where I kind of have to feel that. But at the same time, they’re both acting. It’s just totally different ways.”
Page 2: Lou Pucci on His Co-Stars, His Character, and Thumbsucking
