Josh Radnor ‘Create Your Own Syllabus’
Josh Radnor is best known for his role as Ted in the hit series “How I Met Your Mother” but he’s also gaining an outstanding reputation as a filmmaker. His debut film as a director , “Happy Thank You More Please” got him great critical acclaim and the Sundance film festival audience award. He recently stopped by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about his second film, “Liberal Arts.” Excerpts of the interview appear below.
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Ron Bennington: What a beautiful campus that you shot this film on.
Josh Radnor: Oh yeah. It’s my alma mater. It’s Kenyon College where I went to school.
Ron Bennington: How weird was that for you to go back and shoot the film there then?
Josh Radnor: Well, I’m from Columbus which is about an hour away. I’ve been back a number of times over the years, so it wasn’t like I hadn’t been back on campus. The character Jesse who I play in the movie, you get the feeling that he really hasn’t been back a lot over the years. Because when he gets back on the campus, he’s just like euphoric. But I had been back a number of times. And I had never shot a movie there obviously. And I got to move this army of people up to this hill top surrounded by these cornfields in Ohio. And they got to experience the college at least for a little bit.
Ron Bennington: Well, always to me, the great thing about the idea of college that they did early on was let’s get them away from their regular society. We’ll move out into the country and it’s this world that now becomes run by young people who are open to everything. You love the idea of that feeling you can be anything and you can talk about anything.
Josh Radnor: Yeah, a lot of college movies are about frats and beer and chicks and all, kind of being away from the parents for the first time and it’s a little more hedonistic. And I wanted to make a movie about the things that I remember most from college. I mean beer was a big part of college sure, but what was really exciting to me about college was the professors, encountering new ideas, reading new books, having new thoughts, like being challenged, your ideology being challenged, and I’d never really seen a movie that dealt with that. And I also, it’s a celebration of reading the books and it both celebrates a liberal arts education and it also is kind of recognition of it’s limits on some level.
Ron Bennington: I think one of the things that you bring up in the film, that once you get out of that experience, you don’t get it again as an adult. You don’t sit down with your friends and try to wrestle with ideas, because look what we do politically. We just yell at each other.
Josh Radnor: Well, you have to create your own kind of syllabus. It’s up to you. Do you want to surround yourself with people who are kind of challenging? Or do you want to be in that kind of echo chamber where everything you believe is just thrown back at you to reinforce every thing you believe? And college for me was an exciting time just because I had to get out of my…even if I had any opinions, I don’t know if I had any opinions, but certainly there’s a line where Jesse says to the professor, he’s complimenting him. He said – “you had us read books by authors you hated.” And I had a professor who taught a book for 2 weeks, he then revealed that he thought it was total crap. But he taught the book. And I thought, that’s a great lesson.
Ron Bennington: Richard Jenkins plays that part. He is so amazing in this that at certain times, I’m like – you could follow him and that would be a movie. And he’s playing this small part, but he’s so – he’s at a crossroads like any kid would be at a crossroads and here he is at retirement age.
Josh Radnor: Yeah. And that was one of the things I was dealing with in the movie. At a certain point, I had these characters and I realized that everyone was dealing with some level of dissatisfaction or wanting to be where they weren’t. Zibby, the college kid, she wants to be a little older. Dean, the depressed college student, doesn’t want to be at the college. Jesse wants rewind and go back to his college years. And then I started thinking about the professor who’s retiring and I thought – what if he panics? What if – he’s been at this school for over 40 years and he has a lot of bravado about retiring. And then suddenly, he’s really staring at it and he panics. And he’s got – and there’s a really devastating scene where he asks the head of the department for his job back. And it’s this really – Richard’s so brilliant in it because he just let’s us see all that vulnerability. I think there’s this myth in our society like you get to a certain age and you have things figured out. You know every stage has it’s own set of challenges. And Richard even says in the movie, the professor, Peter is his name in the movie, he says – Nobody feels like an adult. That’s the world’s dirty secret.
Ron Bennington: And that’s the thing is like all your life, you’re waiting to hit this spot where okay now I’m going to cruise through, but it doesn’t happen. What freaks us out in America is we think money or finding the right girl, all those things are going to some how ease you, but you’re on a journey whether you want to be or not.
Josh Radnor: Yeah, it’s funny. I think we look to those things to take us away from our self or whatever crisis we’re going through, but really you’re bringing yourself to all those situations. So if you’re a miserable person unemployed, you might be a miserable person in success.
Ron Bennington: All the things that we think are what we want, work sometimes better as a dream. Better as something to pursue.
Josh Radnor: Yeah. It’s a kind of Buddhist principle. If you’re depending on something external to bring you happiness, you’re always going to be disappointed. It might provide you with some relief in the moment, but it’s like a drug. You’re just going to need more of it. It’s what they call “the hungry ghost”.
Ron Bennington: Well, I think that’s what you’ve done interesting in your career, is you get where most people would think having a hit TV show would be it. I’m now going to chill with that. And then you take on these films where you’re writing, directing and I guess just bringing a lot of stress in as well as the thought of achievement, but this is your off time and you’re battling these things.
Josh Radnor: (laughing) Well, one of the things that was shocking for me as a young actor…. I was working enough that I didn’t have to have day job, but I had cavernous amounts of time. So I started writing, but I was also wondering like – man, is this really going to happen for me? You know what would make me happy? If I had a hit TV show and I just had a place to go every day and I had a long running TV show. And so, I had this fantasy about when this happens, I’ll be happy, dot-dot-dot. And that thing happens and it was kind of exactly what I wanted to happen, but I found for the first 2 years, I was battling this kind of melancholy. And I couldn’t figure it out. And I realized it was because I had put so much on this idea that this one thing would save me. And what I really have learned is what makes me happy is like really feeling like I’m of use and really being creative and really collaborating with a lot of people to create something. So, the greatest joy in my life in the last few years has been making these movies.
Ron Bennington: And you’re making these movies without machine guns and robots and all the things, I mean you’re really kind of stepping back into almost a 70’s-type movie for me where it’s about people interacting and who knows exactly where they end up at the end of the day. That’s also kind of left to us as the audience.
Josh Radnor: Yeah, yeah. And I like that kind of quality. I have to fight my tendency to put ribbons on every thing and show everyone – they’re going to be okay. There’s a scene that got cut from the movie where Richard’s character and Allison Janney’s character meet at a restaurant. And it’s this fantastic scene. It will be on the DVD, a deleted scene, but it was so good and also we didn’t need it. It kind of got in the way. And there’s something nice about Jesse driving away and leaving Richard going into his house and Allison sitting on the bed with some whiskey. We don’t know. We kind of – they linger a little bit more in your imagination. But in terms of the movies you’re talking about, this kind of 70’s filmmaking, it seems like studios used to make those movies and they’ve abandoned them. They just don’t make them anymore. So it seems to have fallen to independent filmmakers who want to make these movies that 20 years ago the studios would have produced. And they’re just not doing them anymore.
Ron Bennington: So, this kind of film that you’re making, you’ve done 2 now, off on your own. Do you want to stay in that or are you looking towards helping change the studio system a little bit?
Josh Radnor: Oh man. I don’t know. I haven’t really been inside that machine in terms of being a filmmaker, so it’s hard for me. I think a lot of people – it’s almost like saying I’m going to change politics. That’s a big machine that you’re trying to dismantle and rewire. So, the thing is I’ve made 2 movies in the last 3 or 4 years and I have the final cut which is a huge thing for a filmmaker to have.
Ron Bennington: Absolutely.
Josh Radnor: And I stand by them. If you like the film, it’s like I made it. I made it obviously with a large number of amazing people helping me, but it’s my vision up there. So, it’s a hard thing. I certainly wouldn’t contractually have final cut on a studio movie, but it’s not something I would say no to just as a rule. Because I feel there could also be – my father worked with a very big law firm in Columbus, Ohio. And he was courted by some smaller law firms. And it worked out for him to be with a bigger law firm and he said don’t fear something just because it’s big. There’s great people working there. And there’s smart people who work in the studio. I know some really smart people who are working there. It’s not a bunch of morons. It’s like people who do know what they’re doing, they’re beholden to certain expectations that maybe independently you wouldn’t be.
Ron Bennington: Yeah, and you could look back at people who moved through – you know Sidney Pollack, I always thought was a guy who could make his kind of films inside that system.
Josh Radnor: Totally. Totally. He’s a real model for me.
Ron Bennington: And it’s rare, but it does happen. But it’s also rare to be able to finish, write and direct and edit and finish 2 films in a couple years. I don’t think most people get how just gigantic of a task that is to pull off.
Josh Radnor: Yeah, most people don’t. I think you become very sensitive to it after you’ve made a movie. I suddenly felt like I had joined this fraternity of fellow sufferers who you look at a movie and even if you don’t like the movie, you at least know that there was an army of people mobilized. There was a lot of time and energy and love that went into the thing. Unless it’s like some really trashy cynically constructed thing. But if people are making personal films – I’m kind of in that Sundance community because both my films premiered there. And you just have to kind of tip your hat to the fact that they got the movie made and brought it to Park City and all that. It’s a huge task.
Ron Bennington: Well, here’s a great thing that’s happening if you’re all around the country where you can’t get to a theater that will be playing this, that On Demand will release this as early as September 20. And I love the fact that there are a lot of films now that you can see, particularly if you don’t live in New York, L.A., Chicago, I think it’s great for people to be able to see films like this.
Josh Radnor: Oh I think it’s terrific. I mean filmmakers we have this – we all have this fantasy about this brilliant theatrical run where everyone gathers together and watches it on the big screen. But I’m also – I mean so many people discovered my first movie on DVD and seeing it on TV. And I’m just happy for people to see the movie. And VOD is a great thing. It’s not like people who are going to love “Liberal Arts” are only people living in urban environments with art house theaters. There’s a lot of people that could find a lot to love in this movie and if they can see it on their TV wherever they are, I’m all for it.
Ron Bennington: “Liberal Arts” in select theaters next Friday, September 14th, that’s New York and L.A. and it’s rolling out around the country after that. Keep an eye out for it. Because I always prefer to see it in a theater if I can, but if not, if you can’t get close, it will be On Demand, September 20th. Josh, thanks so much for coming in buddy. Congratulations. And I’ll see you next time through.
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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOGFv8Js2pU]
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Follow Josh on twitter @joshradnor.
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You can learn more about Ron Bennington’s two interview shows, Unmasked and Ron Bennington Interviews at RonBenningtonInterviews.com.
