Ask the Author: Jesse Andrews
Answered Questions (17)
Jesse Andrews
it was just the first kind of extreme psychological realism that i encountered in a book that i really FELT, viscerally—she puts you so convincingly the interior of someone else's mind, with all its strange familiar patterns of thought and repetition and interruption, and it was a total revelation to me. it made me feel the infinite possibility of words on a page—that they could convey not just exteriors but interiors, and the latter was actually far more interesting and unbounded. the book that did that was mrs. dalloway but i prefer to the lighthouse now.
Jesse Andrews
hands down, the montage of greg and earl's films, particularly the scene in POOPING TOM where greg realizes that earl is going to smoosh greg's face with a plunger and he starts screaming in abject terror. i have seen that scene like twenty times and i never don't laugh hysterically at it. actually writing that makes me begin to worry that i have a problem
Jesse Andrews
not having to wear pants most of the time, except after a while that becomes actually the worst thing about being a writer. because you become like a de-domesticated animal that can never again exist in the company of other humans for very long without doing something horrifically antisocial
Jesse Andrews
writer's block is a lot of things for a lot of people. for me it's not any lack of stuff to write about but just the fear that the thing i'm about to write isn't any good—the worry that whatever i want to say, i don't know how to say it yet. but what i've learned is that the first draft of anything i write is ALWAYS terrible. so over the years i've gotten more comfortable with writing the bad version of something first, in order to learn from it what the good version will be. it's not pleasant but it no longer keeps me staring at the blank page in horrified paralysis.
Jesse Andrews
you are welcome and i'm grateful to you for telling me you connected with that part of the book in particular—we have this great fear of not being able to mine meaning from experience, and i wanted to address that too. (and sometimes we do find meaning in terrible things—just not meaning that is expressible in a single sentence, or maybe even in language at all—and that's also frightening, but less so if we can admit it to each other.)
Jesse Andrews
no, it's all very subterranean with him—he's pretty out of touch with his feelings, like a lot of boys his age. so no, i don't think he's aware that he needs catharsis—but the book is that need expressing itself. he hates writing it because it's so painful, but he's mistaken that pain just for free-floating ambient self-discomfort—a phenomenon that i think is actually kind of common but not often written about, and was hoping to capture believably.
Jesse Andrews
it's so hard to know where to start the list!—but yeah, my mom is a librarian and my dad is an academic, so my sisters and i were surrounded by books from the beginning and now two of us are professional writers (and the third probably reads more than the two of us combined). i grew up on a.a. milne, roald dahl, beatrix potter, judy blume, brian jacques, isaac asimov, john irving, dave barry, john le carre—and then at some point i discovered virginia woolf and the world doubled in size.
Jesse Andrews
you know, i wouldn't change a thing—not that it's a perfect book by any means. there are parts that i don't love rereading, honestly. but the book is the book is the book—once you release it into the world, it has to speak for itself and live its life as free from the author's influence as it can. that, at least, is my conviction about artists and their work. but it might just be laziness rationalizing itself.
Jesse Andrews
both of course! and not just a great line but a great FIRST line—first sentences of novels are brutally hard to do well and austen's are so goddamned good.
Jesse Andrews
i think if i lost my motivation i just wouldn't be a writer anymore—the only reason to write is that you need to write. i've always felt the compulsion to do it and did it for a long time with no readers at all except for friends and family—not that i need motivation now, but the fact that i have any kind of public readership at all is enormously motivating and gratifying and i feel tremendously lucky to have you guys.
actually my motivation is always that i feel like i can make something better than the last thing that i made. i'm proud of me and earl but i don't feel satisfied with it—or with the haters—i'll probably never feel totally satisfied with anything. this may sound horrible or depressing but it's actually very energizing to me to think that there's always room for improvement—
actually my motivation is always that i feel like i can make something better than the last thing that i made. i'm proud of me and earl but i don't feel satisfied with it—or with the haters—i'll probably never feel totally satisfied with anything. this may sound horrible or depressing but it's actually very energizing to me to think that there's always room for improvement—
Jesse Andrews
everyone in this book is a combination of people i know and people i've just made up—the balance of the observed and the imagined that all writers are always struggling to get right. earl specifically resembles lots of kids that i grew up with in the pittsburgh public school system, in his background and the way that he talks and relates to people—but there's plenty about him that is invented too.
Jesse Andrews
This answer contains spoilers…
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Jesse Andrews
thanks man! i hope you like the haters. the biggest challenge, and lesson, of adapting my book was learning to write about a billion times more economically, which is what a screenplay requires. you just get to have way fewer words and lines of dialogue. and then once you think you've really slimmed a scene down, you hear actors go through it the first time, and you realize, oh my god, this scene is still about 800% too long.
Jesse Andrews
i had a lot of help from dan fogelman, the producer (and enormously accomplished screenwriter) who mentored me through the screenwriting process—he was simultaneously super encouraging AND brutally honest, which is a tricky feat. it's hard to say "these fifteen pages that you sweated over for a week, and are really proud of, cannot remain in the script in any form" while still sounding upbeat and supportive. but somehow he is able to do that.
Jesse Andrews
i was very involved in the whole movie-making process—BUT it was as much about giving the actors and everyone else room to interpret the material, and contribute as artists, as it was about fidelity to the book. the book is the book and i'm proud of it—but what i'm proudest of in the movie is that i was able to make room and get out of the way and let some incredibly gifted and generous artists add themselves as fully as they could.
Jesse Andrews
hey mandy! this is an embarrassing answer but i actually don't know yet what deleted scenes are on the blu-ray. one scene we shot but didn't end up using was of greg in the schenley high auditorium, explaining why this wasn't the film he and earl wanted to make. thomas mann gave an incredible performance and it really hurt not to put it in the movie—but the shape of the movie just didn't allow it. i think that's on the disc! also all the Gaines/Jackson classics.
Jesse Andrews
thank you for this! there was no "aha" moment prior to writing MEDG where the whole thing flooded into my head fully formed or anything like that—i just knew i wanted to make something funny about something sad, and funny in a way that derived from naturalism and honesty. books i like right now are ANOTHER DAY by david levithan, YOU TOO CAN HAVE A BODY LIKE MINE by alexandra kleeman, STONER by john williams
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