THE WAY, WAY BACK written and directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, with Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Liam James and Sam Rockwell. A Fox Searchlight release. 103 minutes. Opens Friday (July 5). For venues and times, see listings.
You may recognize Nat Faxon and Jim Rash as those guys who stood behind Alexander Payne – and made fun of Angelina Jolie’s posture – at the Oscars a couple of years back.
Or they might be familiar from their TV gigs on Ben And Kate and Community. Faxon played the optimistic hustler Ben Fox on the former show, and Rash is about to start his fifth year inhabiting the antic Dean Pelton on the latter.
Faxon and Rash won their Oscar for co-writing The Descendants with Payne, and the visibility that came with that gig gave the pair – who first met in the storied Los Angeles Groundlings comedy troupe – the juice to make their own movie. So now we have The Way, Way Back, a textured coming-of-age tale about 14-year-old Duncan (Liam James), who takes a job at a water park to give himself some space from his mother (Toni Collette) and her prickly boyfriend (Steve Carell).
“This was something we’d been trying to make for eight years,” Faxon says. “We’d seen it almost happen many times, as is common in Hollywood, with different directors on board. The Oscar gave us that extra push and allowed us to do it ourselves, which I think may never have happened had we not won it. It certainly provided some currency for that to happen.”
The film contrasts loopier, sillier scenes of Duncan and Sam Rockwell’s goofball manager (and a couple of employees played by the filmmakers) banging around the water park with painfully honest moments in which the young protagonist starts to see the fault lines in his mother’s new relationship. That tension eventually boils over in one of the worst game nights ever.
“The Candyland scene is about minutia,” Rash says. “It’s about taking something that’s very simple and should be not a big issue – although games always seem to [reveal] issues. It’s really about Pam’s frustration with this relationship, although she’s still trying to make it work, and Duncan being able to see this and his frustration that this is really how it’s going to continue. It’s a sort of adults-being-children moment, this pettiness that comes out because they’re trying to figure out this relationship.”
Given the empathy for flawed characters that drives both The Descendants and The Way, Way Back, it’s a little shocking to learn that Faxon and Rash get tapped for projects that are, well, let’s say outside their wheelhouse.
“It was a large-scale studio alien movie,” Faxon says, diplomatically avoiding identifying any studio or director. “We sat in coffee shops and were just butting our heads against the wall, because it was the type of movie where you have to invent the rules for things. It’s like: ‘Well, maybe if you spray them with some kind of gas? And then maybe they melt?'”
He laughs.
“We were like, ‘What are we doing?’ That was literally around the same time we sat down with the production company that made The Descendants. We read the book, and then we just pleaded with our representation to release us.”
Interview Clips
Jim Rash and Nat Faxon on casting Steve Carell and Sam Rockwell as flawed characters:
Faxon and Rash on whether they ever saw themselves playing larger roles:
Rash and Faxon on taking charge of their acting careers and resisting typecasting:
Rash on his and Faxon’s influences making The Way, Way Back:
normw@nowtoronto.com | @wilnervision
