Interview: Blake Nelson (author of Paranoid Park)

Blake Nelson grew up in Portland, Oregon and much like the main character of Gus Van Sant’s latest film, Paranoid Park, of which Nelson wrote the source novel, he spent most of his teenage years skateboarding and performing in various bands. But (hopefully) where the two differ is that the main character of Paranoid Park, Alex, accidentally killed a security guard at an underground skate park.

The film’s structure, although seemingly non-linear, flows smoothly through Alex’s struggles with guilt and adolescence. Paranoid Park mixes sound and film in a way that departs from Van Sant’s previous efforts and finally lands the audience in a world that belongs to teenagers and cinephiles.

Blake Nelson’s novel is more linear but both works complement each other perfectly. The film almost acts as an existential interpretation of the novel which resides under the misrepresented umbrella term of “Young Adult” literature. I had a chance to ask Mr. Nelson some questions about his views on Paranoid Park, Gus Van Sant and translating his work to film.

Blake Nelson

Benjamin Crossley-Marra: What are your feelings on Gus Van Sant’s interpretation of your work? What did you like? What (if anything) did you not?
Blake Nelson: I really liked it. I thought it was fascinating to watch Gus deal with the problem of how to “show” the thoughts and feelings of this kid, which in the book, I could describe from the first person point of view. It was also beautiful and had a great flow to it. It was loose and fun, despite its subject matter. I loved it. At Cannes, when the Elliott Smith song started to play at the end, I cried.

BCM: Do you feel film adaptations “owe” anything to their source material? If so what?
BL: They owe you the money! No, seriously, if they bother to buy the rights to a novel from you, they obviously value it. I’ve found that film people are very respectful of book writers. Perhaps more than they deserve. Even in the film they made of my first novel, Girl, which didn’t turn out very well, everyone involved was trying very hard to key into the appeal of the book. But film making is hard!!! Way harder than writing books. I mostly feel sorry for filmmakers, all the crap they have to deal with, and I wish them luck.

BCM: Did Gabe Nevins incarnate Alex the way you envisioned him?
BL: Not at first. But that always happens. You have to flush all the novelist thoughts out of your mind as your watching them shoot it, or watching the film. You have to forget your book and try to see it as the director and the actors and the crew is seeing it. In the end I thought Gabe was great. He’s a really interesting kid. He definitely had this strange enigmatic quality to him that really worked. But at first I was stuck on things like: he’s too tall. His hair doesn’t look right.

BCM: Was your own experience as a teenager comparable to his? (minus, of  course, the murder)
BL: Yeah, I guess so. But in a way, this book is one of my least autobiographical. I tried to make the kid an “everyman” type of character, as ordinary as I could. But the way his brain processed stuff, after he kills the guard, that’s pretty much me, just trying to imagine what I would think, or what I would do. The interesting thing is, as different as we all are; we’re all pretty similar in how we think in a really bad situation. Stress reduces us to our most basic self.

BCM: Some writers have good experiences with the filmmaking process, others negative. What has your experience been like and will you continue to work with film/tv in the future?
BL: I’ve had good and bad. When I was first starting out, I made the coolest short film with Jem Cohen, who’s now a much esteemed experimental film director. It’s called “Never Change” and it’s fantastic. Then MTV made a video out of some spoken word stuff I did and it was terrible. The worst! Then the Girl film happened and that went straight to video. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. They were all good people, and talented, sometimes things just don’t come together.  And now Paranoid, which has been like winning the lottery. Gus is my favorite film maker. Elliott Smith (who has several songs in the soundtrack) is my favorite musician. It was like if someone gave you the ultimate “wish list”, that’s basically exactly what I got.

BCM: What other filmmakers do you think would be well suited to adapt your work?
BL: Anybody that’s good and pays attention to character. I’d love to do another thing with Gus. I also think Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor are really great at that sort of thing. I just saw Into the Wild and I thought Sean Penn handled that character’s slightly deranged earnestness perfectly. There’s a lot of earnestness in teens, it’s a quality nobody ever dares to show. Unless they’re making fun of it.

BCM: What are some of your upcoming projects?
BL: I have a new book that everyone is excited about called Destroy All Cars, which is probably my best teenage boy voice I have ever done.  The kid is very funny and sad and charming in that great teen way.  He’s kind of heartbreaking, even when he’s not trying to be. Which means the book’s probably pretty good.

IFC Films opens Paranoid Park today!