Twilight News

Rachel King was lucky enough to attend the National Producers Alliances’ screening of How To Be in London this evening! She was kind enough to write up a review of the film as well as give us insight as to what went on during the Q & A session after:

Movie Review:

Immensely funny and awkward, How To Be, is a movie about every young person who’s felt out of place. Throughout the movie we are faced with the both pathetic and sympathetic character of Art; painfully uncomfortable in his own skin, he is who we could all be, with just a little push in the wrong direction.  Dropped by his girlfriend and with a strained parental relationship, Art attempts to better himself with the help of Dr. Ellington, a self-help guru Art hires to be his personal therapist. Some of more humorous scenes result from Art following Dr. Ellington’s “advice” which in the end turns out to cause more problems than it fixes. At the emotional climax of the movie viewers realize that, above everything else, the film is incredibly true; we grasp that probably all of Art’s life, all of our lives, have just been leading up to a huge, drunken tantrum and that afterwards, we have to figure out what to do with the pieces left over. A film insanely perfect for Generation Y, and anyone who’s ever thought, you just don’t understand me.

Q and A:

At the Q and A after the screening were producer Justin Kelly, director/writer Oliver Irving, and actor/composer/writer Joe Hastings. They discussed the business plan of developing the film and marketing it as an actual business endeavor (a lot of legal and technical stuff).

The screenplay was worked on right up until shooting began, and Oliver Irving considers the editing process as another way to rewrite the script. He wrote the script in collaboration with composer Joe Hastings, whom he has known and worked with for years, centralizing the film around the music. Often, we witness Art playing or composing a tune which is then expanded and enhanced upon to become part of the score. The distinct melodies were based off of the different tones in voices and Joe joked that the score musicians were paid in sandwiches! The film is anything but big budget, made for well under £500,000. It was shot in 25 days with 2 weeks of full rehearsal, and promptly to Sundance Film Festival after having been finished. The producer and director said that they literally got the film back all completed and immediately went to the festival. They talked briefly about how many problems with editing they had, issues with both the method used and the people they worked with, which ended up delaying the film’s completion a bit. They worked digitally, and the movie probably won’t go to 55 ml print, which isn’t cost effective for the project. New information will be on the website in the next few weeks, and they are all very excited about the upcoming Rhode Island Film Festival. The actor who plays Art’s agoraphobic friend Ronnie will be at the screening, and there was also mention of a phone-in with Robert Pattinson!

Robert Pattinson- He saw the film as a way to be free and explore other kinds of film, hopefully moving away from the Harry Potter association. Oliver joked about Rob’s fangirls, saying that they put new pictures of him on the How To Be website updates because there are, “10,000 of these girls who just love Rob.” They briefly mentioned Twilight, saying that it was good publicity for How To Be because the more attention Rob gets, the more attention his smaller projects will get. The director and producer are hoping that all the attention after Twilight’s release in December will allow How To Be to be picked up and released more widely, so start paying close attention in the spring of 2009! Oliver also said that in a lot of ways Robert is Art, and that How To Be will fortunately or unfortunately, “spoil the image of the perfect vampire… all sexy.”

The entire review also can be read in our Press Archive here.

Read the original post at Pattinson Online