Mathew Ryan-Hoge is the writer and director of the upcoming Paramount Classics release, The United States of Leland. At the Ritz Carlton Hotel, Hoge and the movie's star, Jena Malone (Donnie Darko) opened up to justArts.
justArts: Where did the idea for The United States of Leland come from? Is the movie based on any specific event or person?

Matthew Hoge: I taught for a couple of years in the juvenile hall system in Los Angeles and at about this same time [the school shoottings in] Columbine happened. I'm from Colorado, so I had a fascination with how that case was unraveling and how it was being written about and covered in the media. About half a year after I was doing that [teaching], I started to feel like there was really a story there, and I was real privileged to see another side of Columbine.
You know, those types of cases that you read about in the paper, committed by these teenage monsters, and it's just really shocking. I would see these same monsters every day, and they just weren't like that at all. It just had a really strong impact on me, and I wanted to take an audience on the journey that I had; getting past the headline.

JA: Were you trying to tell this story from the point of view of the "monster" or were you trying to reflect both sides?

MH: To me, it's this fallacy that you can define a life based on one action. These kids who I was meeting, like this one who stabbed his mother something like 50 times, that's all he is now in the eyes of the system and the eyes of everyone around him. There was so much more to him and the reality of it is they've blocked it out. They can't get at it and they know that no matter what reason they give its never going to equal a justification for what they've done.
You're not ready at 16 to deal with a lot of things and a series of events happened that led to [the murder] and now it's defined their life entirely. The truth is there is a lot of commonnality between myself and them, and I was just lucky enough to grow up in different circumstances. That's really the distinction to me, that the line between good and bad isn't this fixed thing in the sand.

JA: Do you think it's a hard message for people to swallow?

MH: I think this is a film more than a message so it's fun to hear what people are taking from it. I am excited to get it out there, because on one level it's a film, but on the other there are characters that engage people. My hope is for these characters to stir up ideas and give a body and character to ideas that are otherwise sort of intangible, like morality. If you can enact it through a drama with characters you can sort of stir people up to ask the questions that I think would be very beneficial to ask.

JA: How do you deal with criticisms of the film that claim it is too one sided?

MH: People who say I am too [much] on the side of the criminals in this case would turn if their son committed a crime like this. To me that's the story that isn't told and there is only so much time. I would love to have spent more time with a lot of these other characters like Ryan (actor), the victim in this case, but I feel like the story of Leland is the harder one to tell and your just not going to find that story anywhere else.

JA: As a director and writer, which character did you most relate to? Jena, how did you relate personally to your character?

MH: Well, when I was writing it I related to Pearl (Don Cheadle, Swordfish), when we were filming it was Leland (Ryan Gosling, Murder By Numbers), and when we were cutting it, it was Albert (Kevin Spacey, American Beauty). They sort of formed this triangle in that each of them are writers to some degree and that's how they interact with the world and that was close to me.

JA: Why did you relate to Leland the most?

MH: The character was really personal to me. The first thing I did when writing the script was to make a journal of Leland's thoughts. I filled 50 pages with just how he would view the world and what he thought about which is obviously close to me.

Jena Malone: It's a strange thing, this character, clich, stereotype of a young teenage girl who does drugs has been explored in a lot of places recently. It's like this hot sexy topic that's sort of appealing in a strange way. There's like a list of five things; she has to have this hair and listen to this music, but I think the thing that drew me to Becky initially is that she was none of these things. I think for a younger audience its going to be so important to see that stereotype broken down.

JA: Is there something that you look for in a character when you read a script that appeals to you and makes you want to play that character? What was it about this script that jumped out at you?

JM: I mean, I'm 19, so I always look for accurate depictions of youth. So when I read something that is truthful, that's all I need it to be. It doesn't have to be flashy, and I don't look for any one thing. There are so many films out there that I just don't know who they are portraying when they show teenagers because it isn't any one I know. It's not just that I want to play people my age but rather its like they are ageless. Characters that are learning life lessons or universal truths and it doesn't matter if you're learning it at 17 or 45.