Logan Lerman has had something of a charmed career in Hollywood from a young age. Three of his earlier roles included playing Mel Gibon’s youngest son in THE PATRIOT, a young Mel Gibon in WHAT WOMEN WANT, a young Adam Garcia in RIDING IN CARS WITH BOYS, and a young Ashton Kutcher in THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT. Soon after he made a name for himself in larger roles in 3:10 TO YUMA, as Percy Jackson in two films, and D’Artagnan in Paul W.S. Anderson’s the 2011 THE THREE MUSKETEERS (okay, they weren’t all winners). Lerman graduated to more adult roles with the fantastic coming-of-age film THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER, as Ham in Darren Aronofsky’s NOAH, and in David Ayer’s all-senses-assault FURY, a film that had such an unnerving impact on the actor that he took some time off to figure out where he wanted to go next as an actor.
It turns out that direction was into high drama with the ’50s college story INDIGNATION, based on the Philip Roth novel and directed by the great producer and writer James Schamus, about sexual and cultural repression in the face of a nation in the midst of the Korean War. Lerman will be seen again next year in SIDNEY HALL, co-starring Michelle Monaghan and Elle Fanning, about a man who writes the book of his generation and then vanishes, from writer-director-musician Shawn Christensen.
Lerman’s co-star in INDIGNATION is Canadian up-and-comer Sarah Gadon, who most recently starred opposite James Franco in “11.22.63,” and will be seen soon in Alexandre Aja’s THE 9TH LIFE OF LOUIS DRAX. She’s long been a favorite of David Cronenberg, popping up in A DANGEROUS METHOD, COSMOPOLIS and MAPS TO THE STARS, as well as the film ANTIVIRAL, directed by Cronenberg’s son Brandon. She’s also had sizable roles in Denis Villeneuve’s ENEMY, BELLE, and THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2. She’ll be seen next year in the series “Alias Grace,” based on the novel by Margaret Atwood (adapted by Sarah Polley) and directed by Mary Harron. She’s currently shooting THE DEATH AND LIFE OF JOHN F. DONOVAN, from writer-director Xavier Dolan, co-starring Jessica Chastain, Natalie Portman, and Kit Harrington, among many others. I had a chance to it down with the two INDIGNATION stars in Chicago recently to pour over the weighty material, and they were both really wonderful to talk to. With that, please enjoy my talk with Logan Lerman and Sarah Gadon…
Capone: I should say before we start, I have a friend who adapted “Alias Grace” into a play recently.
Sara Gadon: Oh, no way.
Capone: It played somewhere in the Midwest not too long ago. When I told her I was talking to you, she was like, “She’s going to be in that show.”
SG: Yeah, Sarah Polley did an incredible job adapting that novel. And she and Margaret are very close. Margaret is like a mentor to her.
Logan Lerman: Do you Sara at all? Like personally?
SG: Yeah.
LL: I’m a fan. She’s an amazing person.
SG: She’s whip smart too.
LL: She’s got a great perspective.
Capone: That documentary she did [STORIES WE TELL] is incredible.
SG: Yeah, I really liked it.
LL: Wasn’t that great? It’s amazing.
Capone: So just initially, was the book or the screenplay your first exposure to this material?
SG: For me, it was the screenplay, and then I tore through the book. I devoured it in like one afternoon.
Capone: And what about you?
LL: Same. I wasn’t familiar with the title.
Capone: In reading that screenplay initially, what do you remember latching onto about your characters and just saying “yeah, I can build on that. That’s an interesting person.”
LL: I don’t think I had that reaction. I think I read it as a whole film and everybody involved and all the characters. I just read it from the perspective of an audience member sitting in a theater and watching the movie. And I just thought it was different and something that I would want to see, especially in the current state of film and what is out right now. I thought that this is fresh and different and just what I would want to see.
SG: I fell in love with the characters and the dialogue immediately when I read the screenplay. It’s so rare that you’re presented with such a complete vision on a page. Usually, you read a screenplay, and there are things that work for you and things that don’t, but James is such an accomplished writer, and it was all there on the page, and you could just see them and their connection and intelligence in the way they spoke. It was like a treat. Yeah, it was exciting.
Capone: At some point, these characters must have spoken to you on a more personal level…
LL: Yeah, there are not a lot of opportunities like this out there for me, and I read a lot and try to find what’s next for me and think about it from plenty of different angles and why I want to do something, but the strength of the script and the complexity of the character and that scene in the middle with the Dean and Marcus going at it were so compelling to me as an actor, because there’s not a lot of opportunities for me or people my age to explore scenes and material like that. There’s a lot of running around and jumping in scripts and very surface, superficial relationships, and superficial perspectives on human attraction and life and philosophy. So this definitely goes deep and is different from what is out in theaters right now, that I just can’t stand seeing over and over again, seeing repetitive shit. You know what I’m saying?
Capone: I see 450 movies a year. Of course I know what you’re saying.
LL: [laughs] I know you know. I mean, I like those films, and it’s still hard to make a movie. It’s a challenge to make any film, but it’s frustrating to see that in a studio system. There’s no room for taking chances. It’s all about material that has a fanbase or a reproduction of a successful film years ago. They go through their “properties,” as they call it, to see what’s the most valuable one that can let us do better than we did last year, rather than investing in original ideas. So independent film is where it’s at. This is a good one.
Capone: What about your character sort of eventually called out to you?
SG: Yeah, I think that the complexities of her. Usually when you read a script, and you’re looking at play the love interest in the film, it’s pretty one dimensional, and Olivia is anything but that on the page. She’s so complex. She’s a mystery to Marcus and she’s intelligent and she’s a bit of an outsider, which I think I connected to a bit as well. So it was all those things I think I connected to.
Capone: I’ve gone back and forth on this, but these are both, to some degree, damaged people. At the same time, I almost wonder if they’re basically normal, and it’s just the times that are repressing them and making them feel so angst ridden or worse.
LL: I would say, Olivia seems to be a little bit more damaged by her family background rather than Marcus’ family background, which didn’t really damage him as much as he is. I think if he was born now, or if he was his age now, he would still feel the same amount of indignation. I think he’s such a smart and aware free thinker that he is always going to be—
SG: I think he would have been labeled on the spectrum if he were born today [laughs].
Capone: I wondered about that too, actually.
LL: Yeah, it’s present now too, that we control people. People are controlled. They’re put in boxes and categories. I think he’s very aware of, and a lot of people just chose to live in a society like that and not be bothered by it. I think he is really bothered by the lack of real liberty or freedom to do what he wants to do.
SG: I feel like because Sylvia Plath was a real touchstone for James and the novel, when I read the Plath journals and you read the early years of her at college and you read something like early Nora Ephron, HEARTBURN stuff, it’s like really interesting. Their same neurotic perspective on then, and you’re like, “Oh, here’s one person born at a very different time than another person.” I’m not saying the outcome for Sylvia Plath could have been different, but in her writing, there there are certainly similarities. So I think somebody like Olivia would have a very different ending for her if she were born today.
Capone: In prepping for this film, did you dive into some of the readings these characters would have read or did read to get into that mindset a little better?
LL: Yeah, that’s a part of work for me. We had a lot of time, which was great. This wasn’t like a project that came up last minute, and they were like “Hey, they’re looking for somebody to do this role two weeks from now.”
SG: 11 pages, two weeks.
LL: Sometimes that happens.
SG: It happened for Tracy Letts.
LL: Yeah, it happened for Tracy, and that’s a different process. But I had a lot of time, and when I have time I try to give as much of myself to becoming familiar with my character and the world. As long as there’s time, I’ll continue reading or continue trying to understand what I am currently working on. So yeah, there was a lot of reading. Working with James, who is a scholar and an endlessly curious man, he knows so much. He made it easy for me, because he would hand me my research rather than me having to find it. A lot of times, I have to go find it, and he just handed it to me. Most of it.
And when I wanted or needed to learn something or if I requested anything, he has a team of people that are just ready to make it happen, which makes it so much easier for me, because a lot of times I’m on my own trying to do research. For instance, I wanted to spend time learning what it was like to butcher meat [his character grew up working in his father’s butcher shop], because we had time. I was like, “Yeah, that sounds like a good thing to know for the film.” So a simple request, and then it’s done, and it gets scheduled; it’s nice. It was like that. A lot of times I have to find a butcher myself or. It was easy.
SG: He also like knows everything, has read everything, has seen everything. So if you’re like, “So James what kind of French poet should I read?” And he’d be like, “This, this, this, this. You should watch this film, you should read that book.”
Capone: Like any good professor would.
LL: I never went to college.
SG: Now you did.
LL: Yeah. My greatest resource has always been the internet and finding things of my own. So having him in my life, I just feel really lucky to spend time with him and know him.
Capone: It’s been a couple of years since you did FURY. Did you deliberately step back a little from movie making?
LL: I just didn’t want to work anymore. I was done. I was really wiped. It was an experiment. Every film is an experiment to see “If I do this, will this improve the quality of that?” And that was an experiment in my endurance and staying in the zone, and it was fulfilling, but by the end of it, I wanted to learn more about myself, so I wanted to take some time off and figure out what I wanted to do next, for better or worse. I’m here now and still working, so it’s alright. It was a tough year, though.
Capone: Sarah, you are like the hardest working actor in show business right now, because you’re in everything. Does keeping busy fulfill you to a certain degree?
SG: I really like to be stimulated and I love multi-tasking and I love immersing myself in characters. I would work all the time if I could. Whether I’m prepping for something or working on something, it makes your brain feel so good when you’re just working at that level. I do like that. I would work more.
Capone: You mentioned the scene with Tracy Letts. He’s one of my heroes as a writer and I’ve only recently started to appreciate him as an actor, because I feel like I don’t see him as much in that context, but those scenes that you’re in with him are a separate movie. It’s like a dance. What do you learn from working with him, and what did you learn from those scenes?
LL: It’s interesting, I wish I’d had more time with him to learn from him. I didn’t have any time.
Capone: You said he just came in at the last minute.
LL: Yeah, it was a tough role to cast, and he came onboard a couple of weeks before he started filming, and my time with him was brief.
SG: But pretty intense.
LL: Intense. It was intense. We had a day together before working and we just played get to know you a little bit. And then we just went to work. “How are you? Where are you from? What do you like to do?” And then we worked together and shared this very intimate experience. We were like two fighters in our corners prepping for this battle and we just came in and did our thing. I can’t speak for him, but I left with a strong connection with him, even though I don’t know him that well. It’s funny, we shared a moment that was very important to both of us, yet I don’t know him that well, and I can’t say I really learned that much from him.
Capone: I don’t necessarily mean him teaching you. I just mean learn from that experience.
LL: Or from watching him work. I didn’t have that. It was just like we were in our corners, and we would come in to battle. I want to spend more time with him, and I’m so curious about who he is.
SG: Yeah, he’s like a giant. Physically, in terms of career. He’s like the ultimate patriarch.
Capone: I ran into him at Sundance a couple times.
SG: Did you see CHRISTINE? I did see him in WEINER-DOG, though. He’s really good in that, although it’s only a couple of scenes.
LL: I want to see that.
SG: I want to see CHRISTINE.
Capone: That one I’m excited to see. Why do you think this story is important today? What does this story have to say to a modern audience besides just giving us a glimpse into the past?
LL: You know what’s funny? I ask myself that question all the time.
Capone: And your answer is “I don’t know”?
LL: [laughs] I think it challenges your perspective in life, and I think that seeing these characters and watching this film is satisfying, because it’s deeper than most films. I guess that’s for you to take. It’s subjective. But I think it has more to it than just action.
Capone: I think it gives us permission to do that in life.
LL: Yeah. To debate and explore life. It has more to it than just the basic, you know, typical American entertainment.
SG: Well, as an outsider, as someone who could be a little more objective on American culture, I would say it probably was a time where—and James eluded to this many times—these are two bright, young, intelligent people are bumping up against the rigid ideology of the time. And if you look at America today, what are young people bumping up against? And what are the consequences for them when they question authority or challenge authority?
Capone: Yeah, which is relevant in this day and age. I’m actually heading up to Canada in a couple of days to Montreal for a festival.
SG: Oh, cool. I’m going to be there next week.
Capone: In Montreal?
SG: Yeah. To shoot THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JOHN F. DONOVAN.
Capone: Oh, right. I’m heading up for Fantasia Festival.
