By Joanna Orland
Charlyne Yi and Nick Jasenovec aren’t your typical Hollywoodites. Since releasing their first feature film, they’ve found themselves thrust into the spotlight. They remain down to earth, charming, funny, and not “twee” like some critics claim. Yes, they are slightly bitter about those patronizing reviews. Nonetheless, they persevere with endless promotion of their charming, funny, and just AWESOME film Paper Heart.
The origin of Paper Heart goes way back to the days when a girl named Charlyne met a boy named Nick. They met through a mutual friend, shot some hoops, and Charlyne pursued him. Not romantically or sexually of course. “We’re like brother and sister… so that would be like incest,” says Charlyne.
Charlyne had the idea of making a documentary about love, and came to Nick. She questioned the idea of love and wanted to focus on that aspect of the narrative, but Nick suggested that she appear on camera. He convinced her to feature in the film, but they couldn’t guarantee that she would experience love firsthand to create a story arc — that inspired the idea of creating a hybrid of fiction and documentary.
“Ideally, you know, if it was more than just stories, if there was an arc, and if I actually experienced love firsthand, that would be a great situation, but we couldn’t guarantee that. So that kind of inspired the idea of creating a hybrid of both fiction, a through line, and documentary elements,” explains Charlyne.
So that is how the film Paper Heart got its heroine Charlyne Yi. Alongside Charlyne is the character of Nick Jasenovec. But this is not the real Nick Jasenovec. Nick and Charlyne approached their friend Jake Johnson to take on the role of Nick for the film. But why would the real Nick Jasenovec bail out on acting in his own film? “I’m just not a very good actor,” Nick confesses. “So the minute we realized that that was going to be kind of an important role, I wasn’t really up to the task, and, uh, we decided to get our friend Jake to play me.”
Jake briefly considered following the real Nick around to study him and accurately portray him. But, as the real Nick points out, “it was kind of unnecessary to, ‘cause no one knows who I am or what I’m like…”
Charlyne also appreciated working with Jake rather than Nick on screen. “It’s also nice to have someone who knew how to act and improvise, ‘cause I didn’t. I didn’t know what I was doing, so like being paired up with him is so helpful and he SAVED me, you know,” she states.
So we know it’s not the real Nick on screen, but are we witnessing the “real” Charlyne?
“It’s close to me as far as mannerisms and voice and certain habits, but I think, you know, ultimately a character or a person is defined by actions and I would never make a documentary exposing my real life — my personal life especially. In that way, I think we’re very different,” she says. “It’s like it’s fictionalized just enough to make the movie work,” adds Nick.
With all of this blurring the line between reality and fiction, they hope that the audience will just enjoy the film for its entertainment value, and not be too hindered by these blurry lines.
Making a hybrid documentary / narrative, Nick and Charlyne found many challenges. “One of the earliest ones, just in the creation of storyline and stuff, was always trying to rationalize why the cameras would be there,” says Nick.
Over 300 hours of footage were shot and they had to root through it all in the edit sessions. They first put together all of the fictional elements, and it ended up as 2 hours of footage! That’s obviously longer than the film’s total final length, so back to the cutting room… and voila — 45 minutes of fiction on film.
So after all of this hard work and life on the road, did Charlyne change her thoughts on love? She realized that no one is right and no one is wrong about love. For some people, love at first sight can work out, or it cannot. “I think it’s great that people believe in what they want…. I think there’s this whole thing about Hollywood and how they think that true love is forever, but I’m like, I don’t think so. I think it can last for weeks, days, or years, and that’s something that I learned,” Charlyne says.
Finishing our interview with the usual question — what would be the one word to sum up Paper Heart?
“Twee! Quirky! That’s what negative people would like to… I embrace it,” jests Nick.
“Voluptuous!” Charlyne shouts.
“Anti Sexy!” retorts Nick.
“What? That’s contradicting what I’m saying!!” says Charlyne.
They both agree that to define Paper Heart as one word in a serious way would be too difficult and too pretentious — so in the end, they can only joke.
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Please read our ‘Paper Heart’ review — part of our Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival coverage.