Perks of Being A Wallflower Live Interview

Perks of Being A Wallflower comes out in about a month, and everyone wants to know about the cast experience shooting this movie.  The cast became friends over the course of a summer, much like the characters in the book.  The director of the movie is originally from Pittsburgh, and is also the author of the book.  Learn about the cast and director in this video interview conducted right after the trailer was released.

For more information see the Official Website.

A Dream Come True

Outcasts from Pittsburgh coming together to become a close group of friends over the course of a summer.  This book is one that means everything to a generation that became teenagers after 1999.  The director and author of the book grew up in the South Hills, where they shot the movie last year. He talks about how important it was to shoot the movie here and really capture the essence of Pittsburgh from the novel in the book.  Perks of Being a Wallflower comes out in Pittsburgh on October 5th.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a book that means a great deal to an entire generation of people who came of age after 1999, and now, it's a movie starring Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, and Ezra Miller. It's quite the jump and when the movie production hit Pittsburgh, author/screenwriter/director Stephen Chbosky must have been overjoyed. In fact, we know he was overjoyed, because Hollywood.com stopped by the set to talk to him about bringing his 1999 book to life in his hometown. And he had quite a lot to say.

Q: Can you tell us about adapting the book for the movie?
Chbosky: It really is, as cliché as it sounds, a dream come true. I’ve wanted to make this movie—I first thought of the title of the movie twenty years ago this fall. The title of the book and movie. And so, I always felt it would probably be both. And so, it is a dream come true.

So you had intended for it to become a movie when you were writing the book?
I had hoped that it would, yes.

Do you have plans to write another book?
I have some plans. Then again, I would have to love it as much as I loved the first one. Just like I knew with the movie, I would have to love the movie as much as I loved the book in order to do it. So, I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I certainly have some ideas.

Can you talk about shifting the format of the book, which was [told through] letters, to a narrative screenplay? And what changes you had to make?
I didn’t have to make many changes. I just had to be very specific about the execution. You’ll have to see it. It’s hard to describe intellectually. You’d have to just see it. I wrote the book as a series of letters because I wanted the reader to feel very intimately connected to Charlie. So, it was finding a point of view from the film that would lead to the same connection. And luckily, with Logan Lerman, it’s not very difficult to get that sense of connection.

Is Charlie narrating the movie?
You see him write letters. It’s not a straight narration, it’s more of…it’s part of his character. Just like he would write letters in real life in the book, you see him do it.

But the letters are going to be a big part of the film too?
Yeah, it’ll be a part of the film, absolutely.

When you were picking places for filming locations…you’re from here. So, were there any places that were very particularly meaningful to you?
Yeah, quite a few. The place where we shot Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Hollywood Theater in Dormont, that’s the very first place where I saw Rocky Horror Picture Show. And the first place I saw the floor show. And so, going back there, twenty-five years later, was incredibly meaningful. I loved it. I love filming here at Peters Township. I love filming at Kings, where my parents eat breakfast three times a week. Where else? There’s a little field right down the street from here, about five minutes away, where I shot the one movie I made right out of college. It’s this little short film. I had this shot planned for eighteen, seventeen years. And I’ve always wanted to duplicate it because I love the shot so much. And I was like, “Someday I’ll make the Perks movie, and I’m going to put my kids in that shot.” And we’re going to do it. I believe Thursday. So, yeah, there are a lot of very meaningful locations to me.

How did you know that you cast the right people for the roles?
I had a philosophy, we all had a philosophy: don’t just cast actors, cast people. And so, what happened was, everybody basically auditioned. What you’d look for is, not just the individual performances, but how you thought they would fit together. One of the great joys has been watching this fictional group of friends, over the summer at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, become a really tight family of friends. All of them. Emma [Watson], Ezra [Miller], Logan [Lerman], Nina [Dobrev]. Really across the board. So, yeah. It was just an instinctive thing, how we felt people would fit together. And we have an amazing cast. I mean, across the board, there is not a weak link. Not a single one.

Why did you want Emma for Sam?
I wanted Emma for Sam because I think that she has this amazing…she’s luminous, but she’s also incredibly approachable. She’s very down to Earth. She’s very fragile. But in this very beautiful way. To me, that’s all the qualities I always saw in Sam. Plus, she can dance. The girl can dance.

Are you aiming for a PG-13?
Yeah. I would very much love a PG-13 because, considering some of the issues that the book tackles, it would break my heart if some fourteen year-old girl that was struggling with something couldn’t see it. So that’s a very important thing to me.

The film sort of relies on this era of mix-tapes, and actual phone calls, and actual face time. For kids who are maybe going to experience it for the first time, in this era of Facebook and texting, what do you think are those elements that are going to bring them into this era they are unfamiliar with?
The elements that will bring them in is [that it’s] a love story, and a story about a family of friends, and families that are relatable to them—not these fictitious families where parents are complete idiots, which, let’s face it, really isn’t true. It’s fun in movies, but it’s not true. I think what will bring them in is recognizing themselves and their friends, regardless of whatever device is in their hand, or however they choose to communicate.

For more information see Hollywood.com

Emma Watson and Her Perks of a Wallflower Experience

Emma Watson will always be known as Hermione Granger to Harry Potter fans around the world.  However, the day she flew through the Fort Pitt Tunnel on the back of a truck she knew she had left that part of her life behind.  Stephen Chbosky must have known this would be a transitional movie for Watson. He claimed during their first meeting that this would be the most important role she would play, and that she would also spend a summer with her best friends.  It was quite an extreme claim for a director, but little did Watson know, that is exactly what would happen.

 The Perks of Being a Wallflower marks Emma Watson’s first major post-Harry Potter role. She remembers meeting with Stephen Chbosky (who not only wrote the 1999 novel but wrote the screenplay and directed the movie, too) who persuaded her to take on the part of Sam, a rebellious and popular high school girl. “At our initial meeting, he said, ‘Okay, not  only is this going to be one of the most important parts you play, you’re also going to have the summer of your life and meet some of your best friends.’ I thought, ‘That’s quite a claim. Who is this guy?” Watson says with a laugh. “Everything he said came true.”

The cast — which includes Logan Lerman and Ezra Miller —  all bonded while living in the same hotel in Pittsburgh, which Watson now calls one of her  favorite places. It was there that Watson can point to one particular scene — when Sam stands up in the back of a pickup truck driving through a tunnel — as the moment she was able to truly graduate from Hogwarts. “I started as Emma with some Hermione still left in my system,” she says. “I went through the tunnel and I came out ready to start something new.”

Check the video below and you’ll the scene she’s talking about! And for more on Emma Watson (including how she mastered an American accent) and 97 other fall movies, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, on stands August 10.

For more information please see Entertainment Weekly.

Pittsburgh is Now the New Hollywood

Pittsburgh is well known for sports and the industry that made us the city we are today.  However, Pittsburgh is starting to become known more for Hollywood than anything else.  Sometimes called the Hollywood of the East, over 24 films have been shot in our city in the last three years.

Once known for its steel mills and smog, Pittsburgh is fast becoming the Tinseltown of the East. A generous film tax credit, coupled with the region's diverse landscape and skilled labor unions, have made the city a hot destination for recent productions -- and the firms that cater to them.

In the last three years alone, 24 movies have filmed in Western Pennsylvania, including "The Dark Knight Rises" and "Promised Land," which stars Matt Damon and will be released next year. These films have infused the region's economy with $300 million since 2009 and helped small businesses to thrive, according to Pittsburgh Film Office Director Dawn KeezerSince 2004, Pennsylvania has offered a 25 percent tax credit for films that spend at least 60 percent of their total production budget in Pennsylvania. Krista Salera, an accountant with the McQuillan Group who works on film production expenditures, said film companies used to have trouble hitting the 60 percent mark. Now, she said, in-state expenses regularly top 80 percent.
"There are a lot more businesses that support the film industry here than there were four years ago, so they can utilize those resources instead of having to bring them in from elsewhere," 

Salera said.One of those local resources is 31st Street Studios, a sound stage and production company located on the site of a former steel mill in Pittsburgh's Strip District. Founded in 2011 by investment banker and native Pittsburgher Chris Breakwell, the facility is 300,000 square feet, making it the largest production facility outside of New York or Los Angeles

.In March, the company upped Pittsburgh's appeal by announcing a partnership with entertainment powerhouses Paramount On Location and Knight Vision. The deal gives Paramount a permanent regional base for the lights, rigging and equipment necessary for movie shoots and brings Knight Vision's motion-capture technology, used in the blockbuster movie "Avatar," to the region.

"We're trying to change the game by having some of these ancillary services here," Breakwell said.

While all of Pennsylvania has seen filming increase due to the tax credit, the Pittsburgh area is particularly unique in its labor situation. Both Keezer and Breakwell cited the skilled and inexpensive local unions as being an important part of the recent boom.And when location scouts are looking for their next space, they'd be hard-pressed to find more diverse offerings.

"There was an excellent opportunity to do film here because of the talent, the infrastructure and the diversity of the landscape. You can shoot a farm in Ireland 15 minutes south of here or you can shoot a scene in New York City. And everything is less expensive," said Mike Dolan, who founded Smithfield Street Productions with partners Benjamin Barton and Brian Hartman in 2007.

Recognizing the need for indoor filming space, the trio launched Island Studios, a professional soundstage, in 2008. Scenes from "She's Out of My League" were shot there.It's not just sound studios and production companies that thrive. Their success trickles down to ancillary businesses as well: 

Coffee companies, transportation firms and souvenir shops have all seen a major uptick because of the film industry.Peak Security, which provides security services to film productions like "The Dark Knight Rises" and stars like Katherine Heigl, receives 25 percent of its revenue from the film industry and has doubled its full-time staff in the last five years.

During the two months that "Dark Knight" filmed, Tyler Mountain Water & Coffee, based in a Pittsburgh suburb, kept the cast and crew hydrated by supplying beverage cases and water bottles twice a week. In the last three years, the company has supplied water to more than a dozen film sets, including
 
"Out of the Furnace," starring Christian Bale, and "Promised Land," with Matt Damon.Keezer said it's all evidence that the film tax credit works."The film tax credit has proven that if you build the right incentive program you can get the work, and the work means more jobs for local Pennsylvanians," she said.

For more information please see 10 News.

Pittsburgh Books Turned into Movies

Perks of Being A Wallflower is not the only book turned into movie that is from Pittsburgh.  Authors from Pittsburgh have had major successes turning their stories into film over the past 50 years.  Everything from Judy Moody to Robopocalypse have roots in Pittsburgh, and they are starting to come to life through actors and film.   Pittsburgh's film industry is booming and we are likely to see more of these Pittsburgh novels come to life soon.

If Jesse Andrews' novel "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" makes it to the big screen, it would be just the latest of many books turned into movies that were written by authors with Pittsburgh connections. A sampling includes:

"Perks of Being a Wallflower," filmed here by novelist turned writer-director Stephen Chbosky, a native of Upper St. Clair, is expected to open in theaters in September. It stars Emma Watson, Logan Lerman and Ezra Miller.

"Robopocalypse," a movie based on a novel by Carnegie Mellon University alumnus Daniel H. Wilson, is expected to be released in April 2014. Steven Spielberg is directing. It's about a robot that starts a war in an effort to destroy mankind and a young photojournalist who tries to tell the tale.

"Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer," released in 2011, was written by popular "Judy Moody" children's series author Megan McDonald, who grew up in Ross.

"Wonder Boys" (2000) and "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" (2008) were written by Michael Chabon, who attended Carnegie Mellon University in 1980-81 and graduated from University of Pittsburgh in 1984.

Of course way before that, East Pittsburgh native Joseph Wambaugh had his many novels about police work turned into movies: "The Choir Boys" (1977), "The Onion Field" (1979), "The Black Marble" (1980), plus a slew of TV movies and TV series.

"The Valley of Decision" is a 1945 film based on Marcia Davenport's historical novel about an Irish immigrant who accepts a job as a live-in maid at the home of a steel mill owner. It's a multigeneration tale examining social classes, love, a violent strike and more starring Greer Garson, Gregory Peck, Lionel Barrymore and others.

While not a movie, filming is under way in Toronto of a 13-episode Netflix streaming series "Hemlock Grove," based on a gothic horror novel by Brian McGreevy, who grew up in Charleroi. It is being produced by Gaumont International Television. The novel and TV series centers around solving the gruesome deaths of several young women in a fictional Western Pennsylvania steel town, Hemlock Grove.

For more information go to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.