[Editor’s Note: This interview was published during the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.]
You’d never known it back in the day when he was running around forests looking for “Blair Witches” and all that nonsense, but Joshua Leonard is a very smart guy. His directorial debut in scripted narrative The Lie, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival under NEXT is a study both of our contemporary culture and a sociological situation that has existed for a long time and won’t go away anytime soon.
The most fun part of The Lie is the actual lie, which I won’t give away here, but it’s something that we’ve all thought about, but wouldn’t admit to because we pretend we’re not as sick as Leonard’s Lonny in this film. We are though. We just fake it better. The real meat here though is the relationship between him and his wife, played by Jess Weixler. The end and the way they choose to resolve the conflicts in this story, are far from what we are trained as viewers to expect, and this team deserves the utmost credit for making those choices.
