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A Day With (500) Days Director Marc Webb

December 13, 2009

Okay, so it’s not the most surprising first question to ever be asked to a first-time feature director who previous credits include of a slew of music videos by such performers as Green Day, Weezer, Nelly, Fergie and Ashlee Simpson, but the first thing I queried (500) Days of Summer director Marc Webb about concerned the major differences between helming a three-minute clip and mounting a feature-length film. And in our recent phone interview, the affable Webb was all too prepared with his answer.

 

“The thing that was most different than I what I had anticipated was that I felt the project was all on my shoulders,” he said of (500) Days, which will be issued on DVD and Blu-ray by Fox on Dec. 22. “With music videos, it’s only a few day—you’re in and you’re out. But a feature is such a more complex task and you’re

really the only person who has the global view of the whole thing. And I’ve got to say that I was really surprised that at the end of the day, everyone let me do my own thing.”

 

That thing, incidentally, was the direction of one of the year’s most highly-regarded romantic comedies which went on to gross some $33 million at the box office this fall.

 

It’s poised to see a lot of action on home screens, as well. And don’t be surprised if a good portion of that comes from a more-male-than-usual demographic, as the now-they-love each other/now-they-don’t romance starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel is told from the man’s point of view. It’s an aspect of the story that Webb found particularly appealing when he signed on for the project.

 

“The point of view is so crucial in these kind of things and, yeah, that it’s told from Joseph’s viewpoint makes it kind of special,” he told me, naming High Fidelity, Say Anything and Annie Hall as successful examples of films that explore the ups, downs and potential comedy of romance from a male point of view.

 

 “There’s an idea in Hollywood that it’s not as “cool” to explore a man’s point of view in modern romances,” he said. “I think for a male protagonist to have some heartbreak is hard for a studio to sell and that’s probably when all the studios rejected us at first.

 

“But here we are,” he added with a laugh.

Posted by Laurence Lerman on December 13, 2009 | Comments (1)