Matthew Lillard’s Fat Kid Rules the World

You know Matthew Lillard as the really creepy bad guy in “Scream”, and you know him as Shaggy from “Scooby Doo”.  You probably also know him from “SLC Punk”, “The Descendants”, “Hackers” and a long list of other movies. But you’re about to know him in an entirely different light, as a director of independent film.  He recently stopped by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about the new film he directed– “Fat Kid Rules the World”.  Excerpts of that interview appear below.

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Ron Bennington: “Fat Kid Rules The World” is the movie. And we listened to a little bit of the soundtrack. You got some great people working in this.

Matthew Lillard: Yeah. Mike McCready of Pearl Jam did the music.

Ron Bennington: Unbelievable man.

Matthew Lillard: Yeah. It’s unbelievable if you think that we’re a tiny micro budget film. And I think, the movie really struck a chord with him. We shot in Seattle and he fell in love with the process and he’s just been a fantastic collaborator.

Ron Bennington: Well the movie is terrific. And it walks that line where you’re like – can this movie stay in this spot without falling into being too sugary sweet or…

Matthew Lillard: Cliche.

Ron Bennington: It’s a really great little film, and one I think that people can identify with because we’re all kind of outsiders in a way.

Matthew Lillard: I one hundred percent agree. It’s about an obese teenager finds punk rock music. But the reality is that – yeah, for the ninety-five percent of the kids in the world that didn’t fit in high school. Or walking through life and just don’t really, sometimes don’t really kind of fit in the mainstream.

Ron Bennington: The other part of it that I love, the relationship between the two lead characters, is you kind of have the geek and the freak, but they’re so much more similar to those 2 things. When the people think – well, we’re part of the geeks or we’re part of the freaks, they basically are just outsiders. But geeks tend to blame it on themselves and like say – I suck. Where freaks I think will say – Hey this system sucks.

Matthew Lillard: (laughs) That’s funny dude.

Ron Bennington: That becomes punk rock. You know what I mean? That is punk rock. That – Hey I was born into this thing and it makes no sense to me and I’m going to thrash back a little bit.

Matthew Lillard: Yeah. Sure. Well there’s a confidence that comes in that, right? It’s like – I don’t need you. Screw you. Or there’s an abject fear that pushes them to say F-off. Yeah, but look, they’re both similar. And it’s funny, half way through the movie, you know they swhich positions and one needs help and the other one doesn’t. But look, in terms of the tone of the movie, that was the difficult thing. Like to strike that balance– to tell that story in an honest way. It’s based on a book by Kelly Going. Hey look, we didn’t want to screw it up to be honest. So I did the book on tape. And when I was reading the book, I had this emotional experience and tears running down my face, 10 pages into the book. And I was an obese kid. I was overweight. I was outside the box. I was a high school drama kid, but I saw myself reflected in that guy and that’s why eventually I was like in that moment, I was like I want to make this movie. And it took us 9 years to get it made.

Ron Bennington: 9 years, plenty of chances to quit, over the 9 years.

Matthew Lillard: Sure. Yeah. And we did. I mean for a while there, I just said to her – Look, I’m a man of my word and I’m going to get it made and I didn’t think I could, so I gave the rights back. I was like I can’t do it. I thought I could, I couldn’t do it. And then we found the Vans Warped Tour and Vans Warped Tour became the machine in which somebody was like – oh, I can see how you would make your money back. We made that movie for those kids on the Warped Tour. We got really specific. Like Tyler Perry does, or horror movies do. We went after one demographic, one group of kids. And when I first came out, when I first brought the script into the world, I thought we would have to do it for 10 million bucks. Ten years ago that’s what an independent movie was. To me, we ended up doing for $750,000. I mean that’s that fall of what I wanted to do. Here’s the dream, what we ended up doing, and I think it came out a better movie for it.

Ron Bennington: So you go marketing directly to those kids to go to the Warped Tour, right? This is some of the Tugg stuff that you’re doing?

Matthew Lillard: Yeah, so what we did, so we premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival, we won the Audience Award. We just had incredible reviews across the board. And in the back of my mind, I’m like – okay here we go. We’re off and running, the movie’s going to sell, I’m going to go off to make a lot more movies and this is it. And like every other time in my career where I think I’ve made it, I realized it’s just the beginning of a lot of fucking work. And so look, we got offers, they were just all terrible and just never gave us a chance to even make our money back. So instead of taking that offer, we went out and raised $158,000 on Kickstarter in 31 days.

Ron Bennington: Wow.

Matthew Lillard: And then we took that money and we became co-sponsors of the Vans Warped Tour. And then we struck a relationship with this company called Tugg and this is where we get really exciting kind of outside the box. So Tugg, any kid anywhere in America, can set up a screening of our movie in their local movie theater. So if you go to tuggthefatkid.com. T-U-G-G thefatkid.com, you can request a screening of our – you can say I want it in this theater, at this time, on this date. We’ll go out and set that up for you and then you have to go out and pre-sell 60 tickets at 10 bucks. So it’s social media based. You have to go to your group of people, your friends and basically say – this movie, I’m setting up, you should come see it. Pre-buy tickets for 10 bucks, once you sell anywhere between 30 and 60 tickets, basically the movie will go off at that time in your theater. And whoever sets that event up, it’s a one time event, whoever sets that up gets 5% of the gross.

Ron Bennington: So if charities want to do it, if schools want to do it, it’s not even just local people, anybody that wants to get involved in that.

Matthew Lillard: Sure.

Ron Bennington: But how do you get the actual film to that theater?

Matthew Lillard: We take care of that. It’s all digital delivery, so that’s what Tugg does. It’s a perfect distribution model. We take our content, we marry it with Tugg which is delivery, so they’ll deliver the film. They’ll set up the film in your theater. The theater receives it and the kids and whoever sets it up. It’s a perfect streamline system of delivery.

Ron Bennington: You  talked about the film staying away from cliches, but I think the best thing you did in the film is the father. The fact that he seems like he’s a 2 dimensional character, and as it rolls out and that’s only because we’ve seen that character just be 2 dimensions our whole lives. But to see that in the end of it, he’s a person. He’s looking at these kids as if they’re people too.

Matthew Lillard: Sure. That was the great thing of leaning into the convention. We knew what people assumed that he would be. After that first scene, the “we’re going to play basketball” scene, it’s funny, so we – Billy Campbell plays that part, he’s divine and all of our cast, I would say, if don’t see the movie, I don’t care if anyone sees the movie on my behalf. Those 3 people, those 3 men, Matt O’Leary, Jacob Wysocki who plays Troy and Billy Campbell give performances that anyone will respond to. They’re amazing performances. But Billy Campbell, I kept saying to Hollywood – look, I know we’re a $750,000 movie, I know we have no money to offer, but I promise you it will be a great experience and whoever plays this dad is going to turn in an amazing performance, I guarantee you because I know exactly what I want to do. And I know where this guy wants to go and I know he’s going to come across as one thing, but at the end of the day, he’s going to steal the movie. He’s the emotional foundation of this entire story. And everyone in Hollywood was pretty much like – Man, no, no, no and guys at that age, at that caliber of actor we were looking for, didn’t really need that independent film credit. And if it wasn’t for Tracy Brennan at CAA, called one day. We had started shooting, so we were 3 days into shooting a 21 day movie without number 3 on the call sheet. So we were shooting 12 hour days and I was going home and memorizing lines because I was like I’m going to have to play this guy. And 3 days into shooting, we got a call from Tracy Brennan and said Billy Campbell’s interested in talking to you about the part. And I got on the phone and I was like I’d kill to have you in this movie. And he was like – yeah, I’ll come. (laughs) He was like the nicest guy. He’s like – yeah, sounds fun. When do you want me there? Tuesday? I’m like it was awesome.

Ron Bennington: It’s really interesting because that’s such a complex part. I mean there were plenty of chances again like we talked about to fuck it up. There’s plenty of chances in that whole thing and it’s just really really strong stuff. And that’s the thing. In some ways this is a kids movie, a young adults movie, but I almost think like every man needs to see that one part to just to figure out some of the fatherhood thing.

Matthew Lillard: Sure. So we’re all on the Vans Warped Tour all Summer and everyday at 4 o’clock, Shilpa, and they have a parents tent and this woman Shilpa (Hareesh) runs the parents tent, air conditioned with like cold water on these hot days and everyday at 4 o’clock she runs the movie. And before the movie she says – this movie was made for the kids on this tour. This movie was made in light of these kids, built for these kids. And you as adults can help them set up screenings. And every single day she gets 14 to 15 emails from parents that want to then go out and set the movie up for their kids. Because it’s a positive message. It’s a fun movie. It sounds dramatic and down and this kid’s about to kill himself, but it’s not. It has this lightness about it and this joy about it. And in the end, you end up leaving, I feel, with a sense it’s really positive and a sense of positivity. And these parents are like – I want to show that movie to my kids. Because it treats them with honor and respect. The Fat Kid, Troy keeps that character with honor and respect. And parents, same thing. The parent could be the bad guy, but it honors and respects how difficult it is for a parent to be that parent.

Ron Bennington: I think it’s one of those films that the people who do find it are going to love it. Particularly some of the edgier kids.

Matthew Lillard: Yeah. It’s like “SLC Punk!” If I walk down the street right now in New York City and I had 10 people come up to me in the course of a day, 5 of them will say some random movie and 5 of them will come up and be kids that are like “SLC Punk!” changed my life. A VHS tape was passed along. That movie is a movie that sparks generation after generation of those kids.

Ron Bennington: Check it out. Online at tuggthefatkid.com. That’s T-U-G-G the fat kid.com. Or you can go over to fatkidrulesthemovie.com. And the twitter feed is @matthewlillard. Thanks so much for stopping by.

Matthew Lillard: Thank you so much.

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Visit tuggthefatkid.com for more info or  fatkidrulesthemovie.com, and follow Matthew on twitter  @matthewlillard.

You can hear this interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.  Not yet a subscriber?  Click here for a free trial subscription.

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You can learn more about Ron Bennington’s two interview shows, Unmasked and Ron Bennington Interviews at RonBenningtonInterviews.com.

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