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"I think we both felt the most interesting part of the story is that it’s actually about a young marriage and a relationship and not as much about the cancer," Marks told The Hollywood Reporter.
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00:00Hi, this is Mariah Gillow from The Hollywood Reporter, White and Joey Power.
00:07Hi guys, White and Joey Power.
00:10Hi guys, thank you for having us.
00:13Thank you for coming in, we're here to talk about your new movie, After Everything.
00:19Okay, so, it's quite obvious that this is a very young crew of people here.
00:24Hannah and Joey, you co-wrote and co-directed the movie.
00:31Can you tell me a little bit about the challenges of being so young and directing your first feature film?
00:37Oh goodness, well, I mean for me, when Marissa Tomei was on set playing our doctor,
00:43I was like, oh my god, I've never been a doctor, and she has an Oscar.
00:48You know, it was really intimidating.
00:50You were great with her.
00:51Oh, inside I was scared.
00:55Not because, I mean, she's incredible, but you know, that's definitely nerve-wracking,
00:59and I think if I was a bit older, it would have been less intimidating.
01:03Yeah, I think there are probably mistakes that you would make, though, at any age, directing your first movie.
01:09And I think one of the good things about being younger was the characters are young,
01:14and still being able to relate, like Hannah was the age of the characters when we shot the movie.
01:18So being able to get into that headspace was a good thing.
01:22Yeah, and what made you want to write this movie?
01:25It's kind of an unusual love story.
01:29I think Joey and I are really neurotic, and we always feel like we're getting sick,
01:32and I have always felt like if something hurt, it must be a tumor or whatever.
01:37So that was a huge part of it and our personalities, and Joey just had, like, a flu or a fever one day.
01:45I had a fever.
01:45I had, like, 101 fever, and I was dating my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife,
01:50and I was like, I want to marry this girl.
01:52Like, it sucks so much.
01:53If this were, like, actually a real sickness, and things turned, and that was sort of, like, the, you know.
02:00Did you think it was a real sickness, or did you know you just started a fever?
02:02I mean, like, I hadn't been that sick.
02:03Or do you always think it's sick?
02:05I hadn't been, I mean, sort of, I veer in that direction, but I hadn't been that sick in, like, five years.
02:09And when you're, like, actually lying in bed and feeling like you haven't been out of bed in four days,
02:13you lose all context of, like, real.
02:15But I think we both felt like the more interesting part of the story is that it's actually about a young marriage
02:22and a relationship, and not as much about the cancer.
02:25Right, right.
02:26And, yeah, it's, it's, it takes a trajectory that's a little different than most movies,
02:34where it's, you know, boy and girl meet, and then, you know, will they or won't they?
02:40And I think we didn't want, like, the stakes of the movie to be tied to the sickness as much as we did to the relationship,
02:47you know, without giving too much away.
02:48I think the thing that felt exciting about writing this movie was, like, taking the tropes that you see in other movies
02:55that deal with sickness and trying to, like, figure out ways to kind of subvert them.
03:00Like, for example, you always see these kind of cancer movies with these extravagant bucket lists that are really expensive.
03:08And we're like, most kids, if they got sick, couldn't afford any of this.
03:10So, like, having a threesome is very free.
03:14And, you know.
03:15Drugs are relatively cheap.
03:15Drugs are relatively cheap.
03:17And going, you know, going on the water, Staten Island Ferry, that's free.
03:21Yeah.
03:21So, you know, what are the things you can do that you can still afford when you're sick?
03:26Right, right.
03:26A bucket list for broke people.
03:28Yes.
03:28Exactly, yeah.
03:29Yes.
03:30Nice.
03:30Jeremy, tell me a little bit about your character Elliot.
03:33What was it like stepping into that role?
03:35Um, Elliot is this guy who's kind of, like, wandering aimlessly when you meet him.
03:42You know, he lives with his best friend.
03:44But they spend most of their time kind of trying to pick up girls and hanging out in bars.
03:50And they have this, you know, app they've been working on.
03:53But it's, you know, a very, like, half-baked idea.
03:57They haven't put much thought into it.
03:58Um, and, you know, I got the sense, and I think it's right, that, you know, Elliot's
04:05never really had a real, uh, a real, real relationship.
04:09You know, I think it's kind of been, he's had this life kind of hookup after hookup.
04:13And, and, um, and Mia comes into his life at kind of this, this crazy time when he finds
04:20out that he's, um, that he's sick, and, and then you get to see Elliot and Mia, who Micah
04:27plays, um, you get to see their relationship kind of, like, in Fast Forward, it's this extremely,
04:34you know, accelerated pace, um, because of his illness.
04:38Everything has to do with his illness.
04:41And, um, and then what's kind of fun, or what I found really fun, most fun, there are a lot
04:48of fun things about this great, but what I found most fun was kind of when you stop.
04:52The ball cap, right?
04:53Yeah, the ball cap is the most fun.
04:54But it was when you stop fast-forwarding.
04:57You kind of, there's a very sudden, like, pause, or stop.
05:02And that's when he's healthy, and they're married.
05:06And, and I think trying to figure out their relationship at that point, and, and kind of
05:13this, you know, acceleration into adulthood was, um, was exciting for me, you know, as
05:18an actor to explore, um, any character kind of, like, in that stage of trying to find out
05:24what kind of, uh, a person they are, really, you know, what an adult they are.
05:29Um, this is probably a question for all three of you, but the chemistry between Elliot and
05:35Mia, um, you and Micah, um, how did that develop?
05:39Like, how, how were you able to kind of bring it out?
05:41Because they definitely have a really interesting-
05:43We just struck gold.
05:44Micah's just really good.
05:45We were so lucky.
05:46We didn't hang out that much before.
05:49We tried a lot, I remember.
05:51I met her at South By, she had a movie there, the South By, before we had our movie there.
05:56Um, and we, like, ran into each other, and in a very big group, kind of all got drunk collectively
06:02one night, but we didn't necessarily hang out that much.
06:05Um, but then we got there, and, and I think, yeah, we, she's just really good, and, and
06:12you worked.
06:12Got lucky, and, and, you know, and, uh, and it worked, I think, which, yeah, it was lucky.
06:18I don't know what we would have done if we didn't have them.
06:21Joey likes to say, we would have a bad movie.
06:24It's this thing.
06:25Which I think is totally true.
06:27We got so lucky.
06:28It's not true.
06:29Yeah, and Jeremy, um, your character has a little similarities to your character on Shameless.
06:34Mm-hmm.
06:35How has Shameless, kind of, prepared you for these, like, romantic movie roles?
06:42Romantic movie roles?
06:44Um...
06:45You know, it sounds a little odd, but it's kind of true.
06:48How is, how is Lip?
06:50I don't know, I mean, I think the interesting thing about, not necessarily Lip, but, like,
06:56playing one character for so long, is that I've grown a lot with Lip, and I've kind of,
07:05it sounds so actorian dumb, but, like, I think I've learned things from him, and, you know,
07:10I try to teach him things sometimes.
07:13Um, and so I think just, like, working on one character for that long, and trying to find
07:18out what's changing in him all the time is helpful in reading, you know, other characters
07:24and trying to connect them to what I'm going through at any given point.
07:30So immediately, kind of what I was talking about before, what interested me in Elliot
07:33was him kind of being on the cusp of adulthood, and then trying to learn something from Elliot,
07:39and in that, I think really trying to, you know, embody him, um, was easy,
07:44because I was just so interested in him, I was so curious about him, um, and then,
07:48but they also made it really easy, because, you know, they wrote a really lovely script
07:53with these two very, you know, fleshed-out characters that, um, that needed a lot from one another,
07:58and that's always something easy to play, it makes, you know, it makes the actor's job easy.
08:03Do you think you learned anything from him?
08:05No.
08:08Well, he's now having a baby.
08:10I mean, circle of life.
08:11Yeah, I was thinking about that today, I mean, I was, because, you know, the film was previously called Shotgun,
08:17and, you know, you automatically think of Shotgun Wedding, um, and this was, you know,
08:22which is usually because of, you've got a baby on the way, kind of thing,
08:26but this was about an illness, so I was kind of thinking about, yeah,
08:29baby girl coming into the world, and Elliot, and if it had been, you know,
08:34a more, um, straightforward Shotgun Wedding, you know.
08:37Yeah, and all of you are so young and really throwing yourselves into your careers,
08:43and I think it's really interesting how these two characters surround themselves with, you know,
08:49other people their own age who are, you know, sex obsessed, weed smoking, TV watching,
08:56like, kind of wasting their time.
08:58Um, did you ever have a phase like this when you were young,
09:01or did you guys kind of skip over that and get right into the business of working?
09:06I think you can do both simultaneously.
09:08Yeah.
09:08You can do both, but I did live in a house with five other dudes,
09:12and then there was one guy, additionally, who for, like, six months lived in a stairwell
09:16between the garage and the bathroom.
09:19Oh, my God.
09:19So, I feel like that's, like, the closest.
09:22Wow.
09:23But by choice, he could have afforded an apartment he wanted to, like,
09:27He just lived that life.
09:28He wanted to be in the house with the dudes.
09:30Yeah, yeah.
09:30One of the apps in the movie that they're trying to make is called InstaJizz,
09:34where, sorry, you can cut this out if you want,
09:37but, um, it's where you can just automatically put jizz on anyone's face if you hate them.
09:42Right.
09:43That's an ego's genius idea.
09:45Anyways, it got cut out of the movie.
09:46Shocking.
09:47Apparently.
09:48But, anyways, that was a real, one of my friends,
09:51I remember him pitching that when he was drunk, and he was dead serious.
09:55Duran pitched it, really.
09:56He was so hyped on that.
09:57Duran, who plays Nico, Duran Horton, yeah, he was so great.
10:01But in the scene where he's pitching that, he was, like, jazzed about it, man.
10:05He was, like, this is it, you know?
10:07It was funny.
10:09I loved his inflections with InstaJizz.
10:11It was always, like, InstaJizz!
10:14It's, like, Instagram, he's, like...
10:15No, no, no, no.
10:16Well, before I let you go, I have a couple of quick questions for you.
10:22The first director who inspired you?
10:27This is cheesy, but Steven Spielberg, catch me if you can.
10:31Oh, yeah.
10:32I liked, um, I think when I saw The Talented Mr. Ripley, that had, like, such, I was like,
10:39whoa, that's a movie.
10:40I was very, I was probably too young to have seen it.
10:43But I just thought it was so beautiful, and so, uh, Anthony Mangala, who directed that,
10:47yeah, it was great.
10:48I think, uh, like, one answer is Tamara Davis, who made Billy Madison.
10:54That kind of works with her.
10:55Or I would just say, you know, like, Paul Thomas Anderson.
10:59Yeah, Paul Thomas Anderson, yeah.
11:00Bobby Knight was big.
11:04Just cover all the things.
11:05Yeah.
11:06Uh, best movie idea that hasn't been made yet?
11:10I would have written it if I knew it.
11:14Yeah, I don't know.
11:15I mean, same.
11:17We should try and make, we shouldn't share it with you guys.
11:20It's basically fun.
11:21Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11:23I don't know.
11:24Uh, last movie you saw that moved you to tears?
11:27What was the last movie I saw?
11:29It was Eighth Grade.
11:30I thought it was amazing, yeah.
11:32Yeah, and also just thinking of, you know, Eighth Grade Girl, and I couldn't help but
11:36thinking about Baby Girl in middle school, and I was, yeah.
11:40I think Still Alice.
11:42Oh, yeah.
11:42I mean, that was, I left weeping like a baby after that one.
11:47I don't know, but I am rereading Harry Potter right now, and I'm on the last book, and I
11:53cried two days ago while I was reading it.
11:56Really?
11:56The last one?
11:57Yeah.
11:58It does get pretty.
11:58It gets really, like, you really?
12:01You rereading all of them?
12:02Yeah, I was just going to reread the first one for, like, the awards thing, and then
12:05I was, like, about two months later on the last book.
12:09And the worst piece of advice you've received from the industry?
12:14You don't have to call out names.
12:15Oh, so many.
12:17Oh, yeah.
12:18I mean, yeah, I met some guy.
12:21He's kind of a friend of mine, but maybe not anymore.
12:23But he was like, no matter how unhappy you get, just keep going.
12:26And I was like, what kind of advice is that?
12:30That's amazing.
12:31Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:34I don't know.
12:34I think the idea that you have to pick one career in order to be successful is just not true.
12:41I don't know.
12:41I like to go balls to the wall, try and pursue as many possible things, and see what sticks.
12:46Yeah.
12:46I got, like, you don't know how to write, go back to film school.
12:51Or go to film school.
12:53Go back to film school.
12:54Brutal.
12:57That's terrible.
12:57That's not really advice.
12:58That's just mean.
12:59I guess the advice is go to film school.
13:01And they just, like, added an insult to the advice to knock me down a couple pets.
13:06And finally, as young Hollywood, do you have any hopes for the industry moving forward?
13:15That's a big question.
13:20I mean, I think just keep letting young people make things.
13:25Like, give them the money.
13:26Give them the people.
13:27You know, let them tell their stories.
13:30And I think that's happening, obviously.
13:31We're sitting here.
13:32But to keep it up, you know.
13:36Yeah, I think it's...
13:36Give them the opportunities.
13:37I think it's really cool that people in the middle of nowhere can see whatever movie they want now because of all these streaming services.
13:44So, like, you know, movies like ours can now be seen everywhere, which is so cool.
13:49That wasn't the case before unless you had an art house theater in your town.
13:52So I think that's exciting.
13:53But I hope it keeps going that way, and I hope theaters stay alive and also succeed.
14:00So it's a tricky balance, and I don't know the solution to that.
14:03But theaters, yes, I hope they continue to exist.
14:08That's, like, a thing that I hope for.
14:10And also, like, because there's so much stuff, I hope that people, like, it's not just, like, about consuming the thing and then, like, moving on to the next show or movie or whatever.
14:21But, like, that, you know, once someone makes something that the people who watch it hopefully, like, will sit with it for two seconds before they check their phones and, like, you know.
14:33Hopefully it might make an impact on them.
14:35Yeah.
14:36Yeah, yeah.
14:37Yes.
14:38Cool.
14:39I concur.
14:41Wonderful.
14:41Well, thank you very much.
14:42The movie is after everything.
14:44Congratulations.
14:45Thanks so much.
14:46Yeah, thanks for having us.
14:47Appreciate it.
14:47Appreciate it.
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