![\"Admission](\"http:\/\/www.shockya.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/Admission-Poster.jpg\" "\\"Admission-Poster\\"")
For a guy whose college essay was about being an underachiever, director Paul Weitz really came out on top. He\u2019s got credits like \u201cAmerican Pie,\u201d \u201cIn Good Company,\u201d \u201cAbout a Boy,\u201d and more to his name and, with his latest film, \u201cAdmission,\u201d Weitz could strike the ideal union of a modestly scaled production with a very wide appeal.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdmission\u201d will strike a chord with anyone who\u2019s gone through or plans to go through the college admission process. It stars Tina Fey as Portia Nathan, a Princeton admissions officer dedicated to the institution\u2019s strict standards. When the opportunity for a promotion arises, Portia is determined to get the gig. However, when she attempts to impress her superior by expanding her annual recruiting trip by visiting an alternative high school, she\u2019s forced to recognize that there may be bright young minds outside of Princeton\u2019s cookie cutter idea of the ideal prospective student.<\/p>\n
In honor of \u201cAdmission\u2019s\u201d Friday, March 22nd debut, Weitz took the time to sit down and talk all things college admissions. He dished on his own experience applying to college and the trajectory he\u2019s got in mind for his kids. Weitz also delved into the challenge of meeting audience expectations while also exceeding them, working with his ideal cast, and more. Check it all out for yourself in the interview below.<\/p>\n
What was it about this script that made you think this was the movie for you?<\/FONT><\/B> And all that happened before a script was even written?<\/FONT><\/B> So you never had a #2? It was always Tina or nothing?<\/FONT><\/B> For you personally, did you ever go through a nightmarish college admission process?<\/FONT><\/B> Do you remember what your college essay was about?<\/FONT><\/B> [Laughs] That\u2019s funny; mine was about running for student government and never winning. Maybe there\u2019s something to the underachiever angle.<\/FONT><\/B> And how about your own kids? After going through the process yourself and making this movie, does that influence where you\u2019ll push them?<\/FONT><\/B> It\u2019s funny; that makes me think about \u201cLittle Fockers,\u201d too.<\/FONT><\/B> Speaking of that, can you tell me about the challenges of making a commercial comedy? How do you manage what you want to do with the required expectations?<\/FONT><\/B> How about those audience expectations? People see a poster with Tina Fey and Paul Rudd and they\u2019re expecting to get something very specific, but then you also have to take it a step further and give them something unexpected, too. Is there any pressure that comes with that?<\/FONT><\/B>
\nPaul Weitz:<\/B> It wasn\u2019t the script. The process was read the book, meet with [screenwriter] Karen Croner who I\u2019d known for a while. I was directing something and so she went off and did a really great job on the first shot at the script. But, even before that, I read it and the cruel, x-ray version of it I thought would make an interesting movie. This woman who\u2019s activity decided to not be a parent who has set up this life where she\u2019s judging kids who\u2019s then thrown into this situation where she\u2019s completely unbalanced, I thought that would make a cool movie. But I had to make a bunch of decisions about how to adapt the novel, so Karen and I worked on the plot and then we went to New York and pitched it beat by beat to Tina because I knew if there were certain things that I was doing that she wasn\u2019t gonna be into, there was no point because I really felt like the movie was specific to her in a similar way to how I felt when my brother and I approached Hugh Grant about \u201cAbout a Boy.\u201d We couldn\u2019t quite imagine anybody else doing that role, so is she hadn\u2019t wanted to do it and wanted to do it in the way that I was talking about, I wouldn\u2019t have done the movie.<\/p>\n
\nIt was really off the plot. There wasn\u2019t much point to going ahead with the script unless we knew that Tina was game for doing things this way.<\/p>\n
\nYeah, basically. I felt like this role of somebody who is smart enough for you to believe that she is justifying her decisions in life and that she\u2019s smart enough to hide her deficiencies from herself was perfect for Tina.<\/p>\n![\"Tina](\"http:\/\/www.shockya.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/Tina-Fey-Paul-Weitz-Admission.jpg\" "\\"Tina-Fey-Paul-Weitz-Admission\\"")
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\n[Laughs] It wasn\u2019t a nightmare. Actually, in high school, I lived in New York in an apartment building and I had to deal with the doormen of the apartment building that, when my report cards would arrive, I would have them hold them for me before my parents saw them. I would actually doctor my report cards before my parents could see them. My high school had a thing where the college guidance counselor would meet with your parents before figuring out where to apply and it was a really funny meeting because my dad thought that I had these incredible grades and could pretty much go anywhere I wanted, and the guidance counselor was like, \u2018Um, sorry.\u2019 [Laughs] And I knew what the disconnect was and I wasn\u2019t saying it. So it was a really funny meeting, but I ended up having a really good college experience. I guess I was lucky I wasn\u2019t able to go to certain places my parents would have wanted me to go.<\/p>\n
\nYeah, it was about being an underachiever. [Laughs]<\/p>\n
\nYeah! That\u2019s good! That\u2019s a good take on it!<\/p>\n
\nYeah, I think the thing is you can push your kids in whatever direction, but their true nature\u2019s gonna pop to the surface anyway. It\u2019s like a bath toy you\u2019re trying to keep under the water, so you\u2019ve got to watch it because kids often want to please their parents or rebel against them. I grew up in New York and I feel like the kids I graduated with all had big advantages educationally, but some of them wound up being happy and some of them ended up being miserable, and there didn\u2019t seem to be any correlation to the fact that they got into a place in the city that was an elitist institution. So I try to keep that in mind more than anything else. And in terms of schools, my wife and I, we have a nine-year-old, a six-year-old, and a two-year-old, and we seem to only be drawn to schools where if you show up, you can get in. I\u2019m not into competing to get my kid into a school. There\u2019s something heinous about it, I think. <\/p>\n
\nYeah. That\u2019s funny. I hadn\u2019t thought about that.<\/p>\n![\"Tina](\"http:\/\/www.shockya.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/Tina-Fey-Admission.jpg\" "\\"Tina-Fey-Admission\\"")
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\nThis movie was a low budget movie and I like that because I feel freedom. The most commercial movie I ever made, evidently, was \u201cAmerican Pie\u201d [laughs], but nobody knew what that was gonna be and the people at the studio, apparently they called it \u201cQuaalude High\u201d internally because they felt like everybody was acting really badly in it, and they didn\u2019t know what we were doing. [Laughs] I think it\u2019s hard to tell what\u2019s gonna be commercial, but the higher your budget, the more pressure you have to give over control to what the studio sees as the audience. I was happy that we were all game for doing this in a roughly low budget fashion. Having said that, I do think that this is not a particularly obscure film emotionally, and it\u2019s a comedy with three really great comedians, so I\u2019d be delighted if people went to see it.<\/p>\n
\nI don\u2019t feel the pressure because I\u2019m like a village idiot; I\u2019m just doing my thing. [Laughs] Going back to when my brother and I wrote the movie \u201cAntz,\u201d an animated film with Woody Allen playing a neurotic ant, and we worked on it for two and a half years before it came out, and I remember going to the theater on the first day and there was a little five-year-old kid pointing at the poster, jumping up and down, yelling, \u2018Antz,\u2019 and I had this \u2018oh, sh*t\u2019 moment where I realized that this was a movie for kids, and I\u2019d completely forgotten about it. [Laughs] I think it\u2019s a massive trap to try to meet audience expectations because you can really ruin a piece because you don\u2019t know what they\u2019re expecting. You rapidly find out when you do a test screening that people both want you to deliver on the premise and, at the same time, they get very annoyed if it\u2019s exactly what they think it\u2019s gonna be. I don\u2019t know where the thin borderline is between those two things, but it seems like the way to walk that bored is to not think about it.<\/p>\n
![\"Lily](\"http:\/\/www.shockya.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/Lily-Tomlin-Admission.jpg\" "\\"Lily-Tomlin-Admission\\"")
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