Paper Heart – Charlyne Yi and Nicholas Jasenovec interview

[Detomah]

COMEDIAN and actress Charlyne Yi – who appeared as one of Seth Rogen’s house-mates in Knocked Up – and director Nicholas Jasenovec talk about the part documentary/part fiction movie Paper Heart, Charlyne’s search for love and why they decided to blur the line between fiction and reality. The interview was conducted during at Afternoon Filmmaker Tea as part of the Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival…

Q. How soon did you decide to stop making a documentary and then turn Paper Heart into a movie?
Nicholas Jasenovec: Charlyne came to me originally with the documentary idea and I’m not sure how quickly it turned. But we started discussing it and were coming up with ideas… I suggested she should be on camera because the “I don’t believe in love” thing is a little bit exaggerated for the film. But she did have her doubts and I felt like that could be an important element that the audience should experience. So, once we made that decision we realised we needed a storyline and arc for her on-screen. One of our early ideas was that we weren’t going to find any answers. It was going to be unique to the individual what love meant. So, the only way she could truly understand that by the end of the film would be if she experienced it.

Q. Has there been an element of life imitating art, though, with your real-life relationship with Michael Cera?
Charlyne Yi: We’re friends. We never… I don’t know how it came about but even when he did the movie Juno there was talk about him and Ellen Page dating. But in this we play characters who are dating and there’s a sense of awkwardness. I think we also did lie quite a bit [laughs].

Q. Do you have any thoughts on why more and more comedians are creating shows and films based around reality-style plots? And using their own names…
Charlyne Yi: I think it happened in the past as well, with shows like I Love Lucy. I think for people like me and my friends… we don’t have that much range [laughs] as actors. Even someone like Al Brooks plays a version of himself all the time. We have range to show emotion but I don’t know about range to be a different character.

Q. How did the idea of creating models to tell the stories relayed by each interviewee come about?
Charlyne Yi: It was mostly because I kind of have ADD [Attention Deficit Disorder] and when I watch documentaries my mind tends to wander if it’s just a talking head. But even FBI shows usually show recreations, so I thought creating puppet shows might be an interesting way to go about it. I wasn’t sure if it would work or not.

Q. Nic, how was watching a different actor [Jake Johnson] play you?
Nicholas Jasenovec: I thought he was fantastic. It’s not really too much like me. We bought some of the same clothes and went shopping together but that’s about it. Also, we kind of had more fun with him and kind of made him the cliché, sort of independent first-time film director who puts himself in his movie. We made him kind of an idiot. He was the one we had the most freedom with. It’s a nice relationship that develops between him and Charlyne.

Q. Did you ever consider doing it yourself?
Nicholas Jasenovec: Briefly but I’m just a terrible actor and we were working really hard to blur the lines between the two halves of the film, so it didn’t feel awkward or abrupt when you cut between them. I think if I’d played the part you just would have known immediately when something was fake.

Q. Has either of your opinions on love changed since making the movie and interviewing all those people?
Nicholas Jasenovec: Not really, I felt like I had a pretty decent understanding of it going into the project, so it didn’t necessarily changed. But everyone who worked on the documentary portion of the film, just from meeting these people, hearing their stories and spending time with them… I think we were all really inspired, optimistic and hopeful that maybe there is someone out there for everyone.

Q. And Charlyne?
Charlyne Yi: Originally, when I wanted to make the documentary I was 19 and I was hanging around with a lot of eager male teens and not really people my age. I was questioning things like: “How do you know if it’s real?” “Will it last?” Whatever the length of the relationship, whether it was 30 years or two years, how did you know if it was real or not?

I think a lot of the time people like to re-write history and say it wasn’t real because they get negative feelings about them. But you never know how something is going to last, even a friendship, so I think once I realised that I kind of got to thinking that it is real if you believe it’s real. I also think that in movies or in stories that true love is forever. But that’s not true. It can last two weeks or it can last 40 years, but not necessarily forever.

Q. How similar to the Charlyne on film is the real Charlyne Yi?
Charlyne Yi: Um, I think there’s a lot of me. I have the same mannerisms, we have the same vocabulary and that sort of thing. But I think I am sometimes very big and alive. I’m kind of sleepy [jet lagged] right now but there were often times when Nic had to tone me down because I’m like a cartoon where I get really hyper at times. In that sense, me being myself was unrealistic for the camera. I’d watch myself sometimes and see footage of myself being real and I’d think: “Am I acting?” Or: “Oh my God, I’m actually being myself… It’s a disaster; we can’t put that on film!”

Q. Have you found that people have been confused by the film – that they believe everything is true?
Charlyne Yi: I think a little bit… usually I reassure them that it’s fiction and that kind of clarifies things. But with anything, when people see interviews or watch a movie they feel like they know the person and that is the person. So, it’s much more difficult telling them that it’s not me, even though it’s my name attached to the character. So, I have had people come up to me and pour their heart out and tell me about their love. I’m like: “No, I don’t know anything about that… Sorry!”

Q. Will you be doing something similar again in the future?
Charlyne Yi: I don’t think I’d ever want to mix elements of documentary and fiction again. I think it’ll be one or the other. And I don’t know if I’d want to be on the screen so much.

Nicholas Jasenovec: No, I think it was very specific to this story. I don’t think it would work for every story. Some people get kind of angry about it and confused. It sort of changes their opinion of the movie when they think it’s a documentary and then find out it’s half and half. That surprised me, actually… I never thought it would upset people because I thought that was part of the fun. So, I don’t know. It’s not that I’d avoid it but I do think it’s very particular to this story.

Read our review of Paper Heart



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