United States of Leland director - Matthew Ryan Hoge
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

United States of Leland is one of the most powerful and depressing movies I have ever seen. In fact I was so depressed after I saw it I just went home and was in a funk until I fell asleep. It’s the story of a teenage boy Leland who seems to have everything going for him. He has a famous author for a father, a wonderful girlfriend and is very intelligent. But all that is changed the instant he murders the retarded brother of his girlfriend. Leland goes to a special juvenile prison where his mentor, Pearl, decides to write a book about Leland. But as he uncovers layer after layer about the young man he finds that he is very special and isn’t meant to be exploited.

I had never heard of writer/director Matthew Ryan Hoge before I saw this film. but he and actor/producer Kevin Spacey got together one of the most amazing casts for independent film ever. It includes Don Cheadle, Ryan Gosling, Jena Malone, Martin Donovan and Wesley Jonathan.

Check out at the website for the movie.

Daniel Robert Epstein: I felt this movie was very depressing. What brought you to that level?

Matthew Ryan Hoge: I guess I’m odd because I never found it depressing. To me when I think of the film I think of the strands of hope particularly with the character of Pearl, Becky and Albert. They all question the choices they’ve been making. The script came out of my experience teaching in juvenile hall for a couple of years. It was a job I stumbled into. I ended up happy that I got the job because I ended up interacting with people I would have never have met any other way. I think it deals with serious and weighty subject matter but I think it’s important to make a film that is focused on the hope. Sometimes it takes bad things to happen in our lives to appreciate what good things come up.

DRE: The film leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Did you get feedback from people who didn’t like that aspect?

MRH: Yeah, at screenings sometimes people leave the film feeling angry that it doesn’t give a real clear as to why. In some ways it’s structured like a mystery and people expect to get to the end and you find out precisely why or that it’s a drifter who did it passing through town and Leland gets out of jail. It’s more unusual and uncomfortable for people to leave knowing that the arrow of blame isn’t pointing one way. It’s spinning around and there are a lot of reasons things like this happen.

DRE: The story felt very American to me. Maybe it was the idea of everyone trying to get famous or make money off this tragedy. Everyone is trying to get their little piece. Did it feel uniquely American to you?

MRH: When we screened the film in France and Germany the response to this idea that someone who did something bad could still have good in them was that the French smoked a cigarette and said “Of course” and the Germans have to embrace that idea. It’s a much easier idea for them to understand. I think Americans have something that’s reinforced in American film that we want a villain and a hero and we want that clean and clear line. When Martha Stewart does something wrong we want to vilify her to the degree that she becomes demonic. That clear line between good and bad is distinctly American. The truth is fuzzy and always shifting.

DRE: Did you encounter kids like Leland when you worked at the juvenile detention center?

MRH: Even in prison Leland is considered an oddball because most of the kids I interacted with, their violent crimes come from the gang world. “They killed one of ours, so we killed one of theirs.” It makes a lot of sense to them and their reasons are more clear cut. When someone comes in that’s done something like Leland it’s a shock even to those kids. They treat them like an alien.

DRE: Having worked with young people who have committed crimes, what do you know about them that the general public doesn’t?

MRH: Particularly when you’re talking about kids in gangs there is this idea in California of rewriting the laws because these kids don’t have the access or awareness of the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is a fun thing to teach because we can go through how their rights are violated everyday by their probation officer. I think that this country is so terrified of these kids so we’ll do whatever we can to get them at the age of 16 to lock them up for at least 20 to 30 years because we know we’re just training them to be a good animal in the system. To make them learn “You can do whatever you want to the other animals but don’t fight us.” Viewing the kids that way, does it help them and does it help us. You have to ask questions like, why are these kids drawn to a gang? Are there virtues to being in a gang? I will tell you that the loyalty these kids have for each other is amazing. It’s something I don’t see in my life. Can we look at that and try to learn something from that.

The biggest thing I learned is that they are kids and they’ve become who they are because of circumstance. I feel very fortunate that I wasn’t brought up in those circumstances. When you take those kids out of the settings they’re in such as with these programs which take gang members and send them to work on a farm in Iowa. Those programs are really successful where they can discover there are other alternatives. These kids are no different.

DRE: I thought that Leland’s father [played by Kevin Spacey] would be more of a monster. He’s more negligent than anything but you shied away from that.

MRH: I defend him a lot. He’s the one character people want to blame. To me I understand his worldview. It’s a matter of a guy who has lived his life from a third person point of view. Whenever something happened to him he was always thinking, “Wow that’s a great line” or “That’s really fascinating how she is expressing anger and that’s going to be great for this story.” I think that view of the world is reinforced when he writes a book and it does well. I kind of understand where it’s coming from. He wants to support his son but he doesn’t know how. Its emotional muscles he hasn’t used for a long time. I don’t think he is there to write a book about his son but he’s there to help. He just doesn’t know how. Its just instinct for him to write about it because that’s how he navigates through the world. I don’t see him as a monster because it’s too easy to say “Dad wasn’t there” because Leland did have a loving and supportive mother. I didn’t want it to boil down to a bad dad. Some people can’t leave without having someone to blame.

DRE: What was the mood like on set? Did you feel the need to have some levity?

MRH: You were fined a $100 if you laughed, just kidding. The guy who shot the film, James Glennon, is a wonderful older funny guy. He really set the tone because it was so serious that he needed to break it up. Everyone felt that they didn’t want a set where everyone is grim and people are yelling all the time. I couldn’t see how that would be good for an actor or anyone to work in an environment like that. So I was happy everyone around me was more relaxed.

DRE: Was Catcher in the Rye an important book for making this movie?

MRH: It definitely was. Another important book I gave to Ryan was Albert Camus’ The Stranger. Those are both books I gave to Ryan but I think we talked more about The Stranger. It was the idea of dealing with this issue of people who don’t grieve properly. People, like Leland, who don’t have the appropriate emotional response to things. Also the idea of someone who has no emotional life, that their other senses will be sharper. Leland really feels the sunlight coming into the room and smells the girl that Pearl was with the night before. That was something we used as a touchstone as well.

DRE: Pearl is based partly on you but you cast a black actor. Did you write it that way?

MRH: I wrote it as a black character because the people most successful in my field tended to be black. Don is one of the greatest actors in America so I took that chance on Don playing essentially me.

DRE: You had an amazing cast in this movie.

MRH: That’s all Kevin [Spacey] and the credibility he gave me by telling people he believed in me. I think when the actors got a call from Kevin and he says I’m alright people tend to think I am alright.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/United+States+of+Leland+director+-+Matthew+Ryan+Hoge/