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Written by Joe DiRosa
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Interview with Robert Ackerman, Writer of Origin of the Species
Robert Ackerman
NYAS: Is the movie "Origin of the Species" your take on Darwin's classic
about
evolution?
RA: It's not like the movie shows a young British naturalist's
journey on a
ship called The Beagle. My story traces the frustrations of six
friends
in their late twenties who can't seem to gain any traction in their
lives. They've gotten together year after year for a summer retreat at
a
parent's country house, and they're wondering if they've outgrown one
another, and if they're growing or evolving as individuals. One of the
characters, Paul, played by Elon Gold, is a sort of perpetual student,
and he's been reading Darwin and thinking about the increments of
change.
NYAS: What are the increments of change?
RA: Do you have an
hour? Basically, in evolution and in life, we get the
impression that things
happen really slowly, little by little, but
that's not always the case.
Sometimes in natural history, something
incredible like the turtle will show
up out of nowhere, and sometimes
in our lives we make a big and painful leap
into something new.
How did your movie grow and change?
Great
question. It started as a crisis in my life, after the death of a
friend. I
had been working exclusively as a technician, doing props for
TV commercials
and I wasn't always working for kind and generous
people, so I was often
pretty miserable. My first love was the theater,
and after my friend's
death, I went back to that. I called some actors
I had known at
Northwestern, where I studied Stage Directing, and I
told them I wanted to
do something where they wouldn't have to "act,"
and it would just be about
what was going on in their lives. And that
was the source of "Origin."
And now it's a movie and it's about to be released on DVD by Monarch
Home Video.
With Amanda Peet and Jean Louisa Kelly photographed by
Steve Kazmierski
who shot "You Can Count on Me." Isn't that cool?
So
how did your "Origin of the Species" evolve from point A to point Z?
I
started writing tentatively, then the characters took off. My dentist
had
told me that one of his patients was the playwright A.R. Gurney,
who happens
to be my favorite writer. So I took the first draft of what
I'd written to
my dentist's office and a couple weeks later I got a
letter that said, "I
wasn't particularly pleased to get your script
along with my novocaine, but
I like your writing." So I put on a staged
reading, and then I did a little
production, and a young guy I knew
from Saturday Night Live, David Nickoll,
showed up and told me he
wanted to make a movie of what I'd written. I told
him he was crazy,
but he insisted he could take a six-month option on the
script and have
the movie made within that time period and that's exactly
what he did.
How did he assemble so much talent?
He's a smart
guy. He used all his contacts from SNL, including Beth
Melsky, an incredibly
gifted casting person. He hired an up-and-coming
young director out of NYU,
Andres Heinz, and Andres did a brilliant job
pruning and structuring the
script and guiding the actors. And he chose
a perfect location. The movie
looks like it was filmed in Eden.
Where was it filmed?
Westchester, County. At my mother-in-law's house. It's a magical place
for me. That's where my wife and I got married and my kids celebrate
their birthdays. Making the film was an excruciating process, but it
was
more than worth it. It turned out to be a beautiful, sensual,
evocative
movie. I'm really proud of it.
Where can people find it?
The
usual places: Amazon, Netflix, Blockbuster, and the website is:
originofthespeciesthemovie.com.
Amanda Peet's career has really
taken off.
Yeah, she's everywhere. And she deserves to be. The other
night David
Letterman told her she makes every movie that she's in a better
movie,
and I agree.
What about your career?
I wrote a play
called "Tabletop" about my day job working on
commercials and it won a Drama
Desk Award for Best Ensemble
Performance. And I have a new play opening at
Classic Stage Company on
East 13th Street at the end of May. It's called
"Disconnect" and it's a
story about love, friendship and communication and
how we keep creating
newer, flashier ways to communicate but we don't seem
to be getting any
better at it.
Any more films in the works?
Julian Schlossberg at Castle Hill bought "Tabletop" so that might find
its way to the screen.
What about Saturday Night Live?
I'm
happy to say I still work there. They've been very good to me. We
just shot
a parody of a men's underwear commercial with Ashton Kutcher.
And we've had
several hits this season. "Grayson Moorhead Financial
Services: Losing Your
Money with Dignity Since 1926." And a company
called "Cheapkids.net" for
parents who want to have children but don't
want to spend any money raising
them.
www.originofthespeciesthemovie.com
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