A new, unique female voice is discovered with “The Edge of Seventeen.” Written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, the nascent filmmaker gives us an incisive look at female teenage-dom. Nadine, a never better Hailee Steinfeld, is already an awkward and isolated high-schooler when she finds out her best friend is dating her older brother, and it sets up a chain of events that’s both unexpectedly moving and hilarious. Meanwhile, a geeky boy in her class (Hayden Szeto) seems to be the escape she needs, although she isn’t sure if she actually likes him. Kyra Sedgwick, playing Nadine’s mom, and Woody Harrelson as Nadine’s history teacher and mentor, round out a top-notch cast.
READ MORE: ‘The Edge of Seventeen’ Is A Winning Teen Comedy, Thanks To Hailee Steinfeld [Review]
“The Edge of Seventeen” is the most John Hughes-esque film to come around in quite some time. It feeds off of the awkwardness of its characters’ plights, but also humanizes them in ways that are so rare for the teen movie genre. You could tell Fremon brought some of her own personal experiences to the table for the film, which is one of the funniest pictures of the year.
We spoke to the writer-director about her personal imprints on the film, Hailee Steinfeld’s staggering talents and how she actually managed to turn her screenplay into a $7 million feature that also happens to be her directorial debut.
How much of the stuff in the movie actually happened to you? The film feels like such a personal statement.
Fortunately, what happened in the movie didn’t happen to me. I did, however, experience a lot of what this character goes through, both minor and major details. That general feeling like everybody has it figured out, except you. That’s the feeling, I don’t know if it ever quite goes away. That’s why, as you’ve mentioned, it feels like such a personal film, because I’m all over it. I was just trying to capture what it felt like to be seventeen.
Since it was personal to you, did you want to direct this from the beginning? Did you have to fight for that?
I didn’t know if I was going to be able to. I had the feeling I was probably going to have to fight my way to that goal. The first meeting that I sat down with [the film’s producer] James L. Brooks one of the first things he said was, “I think the voice is so specific to you that I think you’re the only person to direct it.” I just couldn’t believe it and, in fact, my first thoughts were to get a pen and paper for him to put it down in writing.
Wow, this coming from a legend no less.
I fell out of my chair. I couldn’t believe it. I grew up with “Terms of Endearment” and “The Simpsons” and it was just wild to have him give me this kind of vote of confidence.
So you know you’re directing this and you know James L. Brooks is onboard, was it hard actually getting the film made?
It took some pounding the pavement, but we were really fortunate that the studio that took us — STX Studios — was a young studio and we were lucky they took on the film. They broke their business model, they usually do films that are in the $40-50 million dollar range and we were a much smaller film, just $7 million dollars, but they really “got” the script, they understood what this film was and they really got behind it to make it.
Haile Steinfeld is terrific. We all mostly knew her as the bright and courageous girl in “True Grit.” How did you end up having her play Nadine?
It really was a lot of work. We auditioned over 1000 girls over the course of a year and couldn’t find the girl. Nadine, she’s all over the emotional spectrum and to find an actress this young with this much emotional range, great comedic timing, it is so hard to have an actress with this much of an emotional sprawl. It is so hard to find someone who knows comedic timing. Hailee, she has it in her bones. I didn’t know that. She was so thoroughly this character, her whole physicality would change. Everything about her was outstanding and Hailee’s comedic timing was exceptional. She made lines that I didn’t even think would be funny, hilarious. Little comedic moments between the lines that didn’t even exist. I would just say go, and she’d just be Nadine.
That’s one thing I love about your film, it’s a perfect marriage between your words and Hailee’s performance.
No exaggeration, I could not have made the film without her. An actress like Hailee just doesn’t exist right now. We saw everyone and nobody could do it. She will have an amazing career. She is able to move through radically different emotion through various different moments seamlessly. I don’t how she does it. Even if she’s being a jerk, somehow Hailee puts this little flicker of vulnerability and you see its coming from pain and that is not an easy task and that is exactly what you get.
The music is just about perfect in the film, You even use a new Pixies song. There’s a lot of musical knowledge at play here that perfectly fits with the story.
I drove myself really crazy over getting the music right. I feel like this day and age in music is so incredibly important and music is such an important part of your life or at least when I was this age, wherever I was — in my room, with friends — there was always music in the background. It was reflecting the mood and about how you were. One of the challenges was that it was source music, like one of the characters plays the music, not only did the song have to have a feeling for the scene but it also had to be something the character would want to play as well. The music captured the highs and lows of this age. I truly believe the wrong music cues can fuck everything up, for lack of better word. I really believe that. A composer from Iceland [Atli Örvarsson] did our score and I was so enamored with how he could somehow find Nadine in a sound. I don’t know anything about music but I do know what I like and how it makes me feel, that was one of my favorite parts of the film sitting down and having him play something for me and saying, “That’s her, that’s our Nadine.”
I love this film so much and there’s such excitement in discovering a new filmmaking voice. What’s next for you?
You know it’s an exciting time, there’s been a lot of opportunities, [I’m] just sorting through all of it and what I want to explore next, what I want to say. Going through this process, what I learned was how much time and effort making a film of this magnitude requires. It requires you to take a vacation from your life and I have to care enormously about what I’m saying in order to do that, so I’m still looking for that thing that I feel that I desperately need to say.
“The Edge Of Seventeen” is in theaters now.