In the midst of summer's first glut of commercial blockbusters (which seem to arrive earlier and earlier each year), Paramount Classics releases The United States of Leland, an intimate character study about a kid whose life goes under the proverbial microscope when he commits a devastating act of violence. It's a welcome change to the glossy action films and forgettable comedies that usually dominate box office charts this time of year, and whether it succeeds on the same level of its over-hyped competition, Matthew Ryan Hoge's directorial debut is anything but a forgettable or thoughtless time spent at the local googolplex. Thanks to a wonderful, provocative performance by relative newcomer Ryan Gosling (The Believer), the film humanizes the tragedies we take for granted on the news and in the pages of our daily newspapers, and examines with remarkable subtlety the growing disenfranchisement of today's teenage population.
I wanted to do [the movie] so badly because I felt like Leland was so different," said Gosling, whose previous roles include memorable turns in such broad studio fare as Remember the Titans and Murder by Numbers. "It's this kind of character that's not in movies very often – characters that are emotionally disconnected for the whole film – so it's a tricky thing to tap into. I felt he was kind of interesting. It felt realistic." In Leland, Gosling's character kills a mentally retarded boy and is remanded to juvenile hall to await trial. While incarcerated, a young teacher named Pearl (Don Cheadle) takes an interest in Leland, and attempts to uncover his motivation for committing this terrible crime.
Director Hoge explained that the film was based in part on his own experiences as a part-time teacher at a correctional facility. "I went in because I needed a job. I knew I didn't want to work in Hollywood – I didn't want to answer an agent's phone – but it was very easy to get hired because there's such a shortage of teachers. I wanted a way I could teach a few days a week and then have time to write, and then I also felt like I'll probably meet people I wouldn't meet any other way." Once he got inside, Hoge discovered an almost completely different world than he expected. "I would hear about a kid's file before meeting them, or weeks after meeting them, but I was never there to witness the act that was now defining who they are, and I'm intersecting with them at this very different point, where I'm just seeing a kid, and I'm seeing a kid who's saying I really miss my mother, can you please help me improve the grammar of the letter I want to write to my judge to improve my conditions, or thank you for teaching me square roots, or I drew a funny picture of you, and that's how I interacted with them."
Once he became comfortable with the environment and the kids, the story for Leland began to develop naturally, mostly because Hoge saw past the news-brief headlines of their condemnable actions and interacted with them as people. "It took me a while to feel like I knew it well enough to write it honestly and respectfully and try to communicate the story, but I felt it was an important one because those kids. Most people know about them by the one article that comes out in the paper that says so-and-so shot at a kid in a failed drive-by shooting and killed a four year old, or so-and-so shot up his high school or killed his mother, and that's it."
He acknowledges that such a limited perception is what keeps their stories from ever being fully explored in real life, and he didn't want to make the same mistake in a fictional – and potentially influential – context. "They are a monster, they're not like us, we're going to lock them up for a hundred years and we're done with them and that's all we're going to get from them on the that story, and I got to get past that. I'd actually see them for what they were, which is a human being just like me."
Once the project was underway, Hoge turned the reins of Leland over to Gosling, who developed his character from the inside out. "Ryan has the harder job," said Hoge. "I have the easy job of putting it on paper, but Ryan has to embody that, and we talked quite a bit about it and tried to find ways in. I really have to say if that character comes off as believable and a real person, that's Ryan, using all of the tools he has as an actor to change himself physically, and to find certain physical manifestations for an unusual character with sort of an off-center world view. I mean, he changed his posture, he changed his body type, how he looked, he changed his voice, facial expressions and things that grounded these ideas that I had of him as a real person. It's a real credit to him as an actor."
Gosling demurs about his own superlative work, suggesting that the idiosyncrasies of Leland were more organically developed than meticulously calculated. "All of those things came from different places," said Gosling. "It was real kind of a windy road to get to where we got to eventually. The script was so good – I thought, powerful – and there's a definite spirit there on the character, but you have to put a body on it. You have to give that body taste and clothes and the way he holds himself. That person has to have a style. All of those things fall into place."
At the same time, Hoge indicated that creating such a unique character was enormously difficult for Gosling, because rather than allowing the audience in as actors so frequently do, he had to keep everyone out. "As an actor embodying that role, he can't invite people in. You know actors have certain tricks and can say come on, I want you to like me, and it would be completely false, and that character would be unbelievable. Ryan used that, and so he was trying to find other ways of physical manifestations of the idiosyncrasies of the character."
Gosling merely saw Leland's behavior as a front for his emotional detachment, and applied a certain sense of voyeurism to the character's observations that wasn't so much invasive as it was naively curious. "It's like when you watch a movie, and it's not happening to you but you can still get invested in it, or feel emotional about it," said Gosling. "It felt like that's what Leland was doing – but the movie was his life. You couldn't see him watching him doing that, but he was 'in there' somewhere doing that. It was important that he doesn't try and communicate that to the audience, because that didn't feel very natural. He was cut off."
The actor also indicated that his process was decidedly more intuitive than that of his contemporaries, finding a natural truth in his character's behaviors rather than investing them with his own peculiarities. "I think you have to be smart about what's working for you and what's not. I think a lot of these people who go to school get duped, [because] the teachers really tear them down. They're insecure so they have a lot of pain to draw from, which I think is kind of a back asswards way of doing it." He also considers his craft a gift you're either born with or you aren't, but it's one that requires training to utilize properly. "It's like dancing – I mean you can 'learn' to dance, but either you have rhythm or you don't. Acting's the same way. You have this thing or you don't. You can't learn that. But it is a craft and it's a job. You can learn how to do your job more efficiently."
As Gosling continues to work in movies, he finds himself more and more ensconced in the business aspects of the entertainment industry. He considers himself lucky to have the opportunity to continue doing meaningful and resonant work. Referring to some of the more complex roles he's taken thus far, Gosling said appreciatively, "it's nice to have an opportunity to actually do them. Sometimes you have to do movies you're maybe not crazy about, but there's something in that character you need to learn from as an actor, to play to. It's tricky and I guess you have to approach it that way as an actor or you'll never progress. For me I just take the character and be as honest as I can with that character – whatever the movie is it is. I can't control it."
Gosling also admits that in a business that revolves around the approbation of one's peers and, just as importantly, the money one's work brings in, it's enormously tough to engineer a specific career trajectory based on personal opinions whether one has given a good or bad performance. "You cannot be objective about your own work, and it's impossible to like it – or to watch it. But, at the same time you learn from it, and it's kind of addicting. You keep looking for the next role where you're just going to disappear. It's a scary process." With The United States of Leland, Gosling says he's found the level of success he's comfortable with: "I don't want the pressure of having to make any money back. It drives me nuts! The bigger budget things I stay away from, because then I don't have to worry about making money back. I'd like to be able to make small movies about whatever theme is moving me at the time.
"I'd like to have enough of an audience that we can just keep making those [size films] – we can keep satisfying each other. That would be the ideal."
