Jim Rash and Nat Faxon discuss their new film and directorial debut The Way Way Back
You couldn’t find a more unlikely pair than Jim Rash and Nat Faxon. While the minds behind the new indie hit The Way Way Back may be on the same page when it comes to making movies the pair couldn’t appear more removed from each other physically.
Faxon tall with slick-back blonde locks appears the very essence of too-cool California surfer while Jim Rash (who is better known playing bald mediocre college dean Craig Pelton on television’s Community ) looks — well pretty much like a bald mediocre college dean.
Still the filmmakers behind the big pick-up from this year’s Sundance Film Festival (purchased by Fox Searchlight for almost $10 million) are a proven talent when it comes to crafting screenplays winning the Academy Award last year for their critically-acclaimed hit The Descendents . So the immediate question that comes to mind when sitting across from such a duo seems evident — when did the disparate pair realize they made good creative partners?
“Yesterday” says Rash dryly before emitting a sly chuckle. “I didn’t really want to give into it. It’s like a way too long romantic-comedy where we just want to get to the end — will they or won’t they?”
The truth is the actors-turned-screenwriters-turned-filmmakers (the movie marks Rash and Faxon’s directorial debut) met years ago as struggling members of the popular L.A. sketch troupe The Groundlings (which has also fostered such comedic talents as Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig).
“I think [we knew we collaborated well] pretty early on because you’re writing constantly there” explains Rash. “You’re putting shows up over and over and over again but we found that we wrote together well and there’s something about just being on a journey with someone that just makes it all the more rewarding because there is someone to remember and to share those things with — whoever that may be. So I think the lucky thing was we found a way to have a career and friendship out of it.”
A tribute to awkward summer vacations The Way Way Back focuses primarily on young introverted Duncan (Liam James) struggling to gain acceptance from his mother’s (Toni Collette) contemptible boyfriend Trent (Steve Carell). Instead the teenager finds sanctuary alongside a motley group of slackers when he lands a gig at a waterslide park.
“Starting with the first scene [the movie] was written from my own life” admits Rash. “I grew up in North Carolina and my stepfather at the time had the same conversation that Trent and Duncan had in the beginning which is basically what he thought I was on a scale of one to 10… and being told I’m a three.”
That simple scene may highlight the despicable nature of Carell’s character (and Rash’s stepfather at the time) but it’s also gained the affable funnyman a lot of attention for playing against-type.
“He’s a sociable guy and those are qualities that are needed for the role” says Faxon. “It was exciting for us to think of someone like Steve to go against-type and play that. He also very much understood that this was a character that does not change. He doesn’t start at one place and end up at another; he says that he wants certain things but he doesn’t act that way and so I think Steve had the courage to understand that and jump into the role.”
While Rash’s pain is clear on the face of poor Duncan the filmmaker claims he didn’t even write the role out of spite. “If I really start to intellectualize what my stepfather and what Trent is doing the message that Duncan and I adhered to — even though we both kicked and screamed our way into it — is that we both had the summer of our lives.”
