Sam Levinson left school at fourteen and never went back. He talks about a lifetime of writing and making his feature film Another Happy Day.
Sam Levinson left school when he was fourteen years old and he’s never gone back. “I wrote my entire life,” he says, “I always wanted to write and I always wanted to direct…as long as I can remember it’s just what I wanted to do… I don’t really see them as different jobs to be honest, I just see them as two sides of the same coin.”
Growing up, Levinson watched five films a day, “And I’m not joking when I say that,” he says, “Which sounds insane and is actually insane… Contempt by Godard – I think when I first saw that film I watched it ten times back-to-back. I just couldn’t get away from it. It’s a film that just disturbed me so deeply and I was in such awe of it that I needed to just watch it over and over again to understand it – to understand how it was put together and how it was accomplished.”
Among the many films that affected, inspired and influenced him, Levinson says 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, also by Jean-Luc Godard, was a prominent one. “There’s a scene where the two women are driving up to meet their boyfriends,” explains Levinson, “And [Godard] shows all the various ways in which you can shoot this scene and talks about what’s the best way to convey the emotions of this scene… He goes through all these various options, plays the scene over and over and over again, and then finally it ends on just a shot of the trees and he says in voice-over, ‘…or maybe you simply just show the trees rustling in the wind.’ And that right there is like a year’s worth of film school for me.”
“I sat down and I just started writing…I didn’t outline at all; I didn’t really know where it was going. I just sort of let it find its own way,” Levinson says about the script. “And some of the themes that I think were stuck in my head that I couldn’t quite shake – was the idea of that gap that we all have between what we mean to say and what we ultimately say, and trying to explore the motivations behind the actions of others. Because I feel like that’s sort of the root of all evil in a family or in a country or in this universe… is this idea that we can’t communicate with one another, we simply react to someone else’s action rather than try to understand and explore the motivation that propelled that action. Also, the very simple idea of trying to find one’s place in the universe, what gives meaning to something.”
In regards to his influences, Levinson says, “I’m greatly influenced by theater and by playwrights, and I would certainly say that most especially Chekhov in that fine line that he walks between humor and tragedy… And it’s something that I set out to apply to this film.”
Levinson says he reads lots of plays. “I think it’s important just in terms of history and the history of writing. Film is only of the last century, so what about everything that came before? So I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t immerse myself in everything I possibly could that came before.”
Born in Taipei, Taiwan,
Naomi Laeuchli has lived overseas in nine different countries where her family has been posted with the American foreign service. Currently located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Naomi studies screenwriting and works as a freelance writer. The great content shift — the demand for content anytime, anywhere — has set in motion a kaleidoscope of infi nite consumption options with unlimited business models, all enabled by shifting technologies. Broader-casting ® professionals are leading this device-driven expansion by collaborating across screens, and leveraging multiplatform distribution, as the new paradigm for success. From creation to consumption, every aspect of the content lifecycle is being dramatically impacted by changing technologies.
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