Production Notes
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PUBLICITY CONTACTS LA NATIONAL Karen Paul Anya Christiansen Chris Garcia – 42 West (310) 575-7033 (310) 575-7028 (424) 901-8743 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] NY NATIONAL Sara Groves – 42 West Tom Piechura – 42 West Jordan Lawrence – 42 West (212) 774-3685 (212) 277-7552 (646) 254-6020 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] REGIONAL Gillian Fischer Linda Colangelo (310) 575-7032 (310) 575-7037 [email protected] [email protected] DIGITAL Matt Gilhooley Grey Munford (310) 575-7024 (310) 575-7425 [email protected] [email protected] Release Date: May 31, 2013 (Limited) Run Time: 92 Minutes For all approved publicity materials, visit www.cbsfilmspublicity.com THE KINGS OF SUMMER Preliminary Production Notes Synopsis Premiering to rave reviews at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, THE KINGS OF SUMMER is a unique coming-of-age comedy about three teenage friends – Joe (Nick Robinson), Patrick (Gabriel Basso) and the eccentric and unpredictable Biaggio (Moises Arias) - who, in the ultimate act of independence, decide to spend their summer building a house in the woods and living off the land. Free from their parents’ rules, their idyllic summer quickly becomes a test of friendship as each boy learns to appreciate the fact that family - whether it is the one you’re born into or the one you create – is something you can't run away from. ABOUT THE PRODUCTION The Kings of Summer began in the imagination of writer Chris Galletta, who penned his script during his off hours while he was working in the music department of “The Late Show with David Letterman.” After some false starts in screenwriting, Galletta shunned his impulse to write a high-concept tentpole feature and craft something more character-driven and personal. He returned to his childhood in Staten Island for inspiration, recalling memories of a friend who had the run of his primarily absent parents’ home. He expanded on the idea and asked, “What if a bunch of teenagers tried to form a functioning adult household? Would that ever work out? It’s much harder than we think to grow up and be self-reliant. The logical extension of that idea was to have kids build their own house and live in it,” Galletta says. With that very simple idea, the screenplay for The Kings of Summer was born. Although the story was inspired by his own youth, Galletta researched almost all of the film’s survivalist elements. “I wasn’t that outdoorsy. I was not a boy scout. I’d be dead in forty-eight hours if you dropped me in the middle of the forest,” Galletta jokes. After some initial progress, Galletta’s writing process stalled, leading him to quit his day job in order to focus all of his attention on finishing his script. The gamble paid off, and the screenplay found its way to Big Beach Films, the company that produced The Kings of Summer. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who was searching for a feature-length project to follow his acclaimed short film “Successful Alcoholics,” immediately fell in love with Galletta’s hilarious and heartbreaking coming-of-age story. “Out of nowhere, I got sent this script,” he recalls. “I laughed so hard and so thoroughly throughout it. It was so special and unique.” Vogt-Roberts responded to the material on a very personal level, recognizing the universality of the difficulties of adolescence. “That was the most painful, awkward, terrible time in my life, but it’s what makes you who you are. How you go through that part of your life is largely how you go through the rest of your life,” Vogt-Roberts comments. “One of the great things about the script is that it’s very contemporary but never dated,” says Vogt-Roberts. “It takes these fresh and unique voices and merges it with relatively timeless ideas.” Vogt-Roberts and Galletta continued their creative relationship throughout production, an anomaly in filmmaking. “He and I have very similar sensibilities in terms of storytelling and cinema,” Vogt-Roberts explains. “We’ve always had a good back and forth about how to make it a better, tighter movie and to get more to the bone of who the characters are,” Galletta says of the collaboration. Nevertheless, Vogt-Roberts knew that there was a fine line he had to walk as a director. “There’s a version that is just a comedy. There’s a version that is a brooding teen coming-of-age story. I think there’s a really interesting fusion there,” Vogt-Roberts says. With the script and director in place, the filmmakers began an exhaustive search for the young actors to play Joe, Patrick and Biaggio. Vogt-Roberts wanted to ensure that he could find actors who could appear natural and accessible. “The casting process for this movie was really difficult,” Vogt-Roberts recalls. “There aren’t that many kid actors that don’t have horrible tendencies that have been beat into them.” However, Vogt-Roberts found three “naturals” in Nick Robinson, Gabriel Basso, and Moises Arias. Nick Robinson, a relative unknown, won the role of Joe Toy after several auditions and chemistry reads. “Immediately, I fell in love with the characters,” Robinson remembers of his first experience reading Galletta’s screenplay. “Everyone can relate to Joe Toy. He’s what all of us wanted to be at fourteen.” Despite Joe’s remarkable tenacity, he is as lost and confused as any other adolescent. Robinson explains: “Everyone has some of their best memories right around fourteen or fifteen. You’re coming into your own, and everything is a little bit confusing. That’s compounded for Joe by the fact that he doesn’t have the greatest family life, and his mother died. He’s trying to set his world in order by going out into the woods and building this utopia that he can control.” Gabriel Basso plays Patrick, Joe’s best friend and co-conspirator. Basso impressed the filmmakers with the improvisational portion of his audition so much that some of his off-the-cuff dialogue made its way into the film. “He had some riffs in his audition that I thought were so funny that I put them in the script,” Galletta recalls. “Chris is hilarious,” Basso says of Galletta. “It’s cool to have the writer on set because you don’t often have that. It’s cool to be around the person who wrote the script and get his feedback.” Moises Arias, known for his five-year stint on “Hannah Montana,” embraced the opportunity to play the eccentric Biaggio. “It had a real feeling of kids being free and doing what they wanted,” Arias says of his impression of the screenplay. “It’s not often that you laugh while you’re reading a script. Biaggio is a funny, different character.” Rounding out the younger cast is Erin Moriarty, who plays Kelly, Joe’s classmate and the object of his affection. Moriarty stepped outside of her comfort zone to play the self-aware, forward teen. “It’s a bit nerve-wracking. I don’t consider myself as confident as Kelly. It’s a challenge,” Moriarty says. Vogt-Roberts knew that Moriarty had her work cut out for her. “She entered a boys club. To walk into an all-male seventeen year old cast is rough. By the end of it, she was one of the gang,” Vogt-Roberts says. When casting the adults in The Kings of Summer, Vogt-Roberts made a concerted effort to find actors with strong backgrounds in comedic acting. He was ecstatic to build an ensemble of “top-tier comedic talent,” he says. “We were incredibly fortunate to have those people. You can throw anything at them and they’ll be able to take it and roll with it.” Nick Offerman happily took on the role of Joe’s father Frank Toy after falling in love with the script. “Chris Galletta has a great sense of humor. I love his dialogue. And I got to play Monopoly, which is no small incentive,” Offerman muses, referring to a tense scene involving the board game. While researching the project, Offerman took a look at Vogt-Roberts’s short films and admired the way he used his actors. Offerman comments: “Not only did I like the way he made the films, but also the pace of them. The cast were already people I was a big fan of. Those I didn’t know, I quickly became a fan of.” With Offerman in place, other well-known comedic actors, including Alison Brie, Megan Mullally, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Thomas Middleditch, and Tony Hale joined the cast. Offerman found an interesting challenge in playing father to Brie (who plays Joe’s older sister), who is only twelve years his junior. The actors had met socially because Offerman’s “Parks and Recreation” and Brie’s “Community” both air on NBC. “I think I’m eleven or twelve years older than she is. And while I’m sure I was man enough to father a child by nine or ten years old, it’s still a little out of the ordinary,” Offerman jokes. Joining Offerman and Brie is Megan Mullally as Mrs. Keenan, Patrick’s mother. Mullally, who is married to Offerman, first read The Kings of Summer when her husband asked for her opinion of the script. “It didn’t even occur to me that this one part was perfect for me,” Mullally remembers. “It’s very funny, but it also says a lot about that age.