Hi Dylan! So what made want to get involved with this film? Did you relate to the script? Did you know people like this in high school?
Everybody can relate to it in their own way and I was very similar to it in the sense that I was kind of lovestruck with girls always, and always had a funny time with girls because I was shy, but had strong feelings that could very easily crush. And you know, when you’re that age you just don’t know what to do with all of that. So that, for me, was kind of a very personal and relatable thing that was specific to the story and specific to my life. I even had a friend who I was like in love with who was just my friend. So when I read the script, I loved it so much because it was such a nice drawback to something that was still so fresh in my mind. I was 19 when I did the movie, and this was all two years beforehand. It was all still so fresh with me. So I think I was able to connect to it really easily.
What was the most challenging thing about playing Dave? Anything you wanted to over-prepare for?
I don’t think I over-prepared or anything. I think the challenge was playing a very honest character and a very honest storyline. For me, as a person, I’m very internal. I’m very kind of aware of myself and hesitant to open up. So to play a character who instinctively, without even realizing it, opens up and wears all of his emotions, and is very external in his thought and his perception of things, just playing a very honest version of yourself in a way was a challenge.
How much of your portrayal of Dave was written on the page and how much of it did you get to play with a little bit?
It was a perfect balance, I would say, between Jon’s written dialogue and my adlibbing habit. Because Jon’s words would always kind of fit into my mouth just right. And he let me freely speak in the sense that I could recite the entire film by the time we started shooting because we rehearsed it so much. It was just kind of however I was saying it. It was pretty loose in regards to, not improving, but being able to say the lines how I would say them and just talk how I would talk. I think that was a very important thing for him. He wanted us to talk to each other how we would actually talk and he captured that in the writing. And it only got more collaborative as we all came together and he started changing things when he heard us speaking and saying the lines. Some things would work and some things wouldn’t, and eventually it kind of came together to be the characters. I was always very comfortable and very understanding of Jon’s words he put on the page. So I would never discard them ever, but they inspired me to say other things or say them in a different way.