CS Weekly Archive > From the Trenches > 4/03/09

Geek Love:
Bart Got a Room's Brian Hecker

BY JENELLE RILEY

With his feature debut Bart Got a Room, writer-director Brian Hecker pays sweet homage to his youth as a "dweeb."

On the surface, Brian Hecker's Bart Got a Room might sound like just another teen sex comedy churned out by studios hoping for some of that Judd Apatow-esque success. The plot revolves around high school senior Danny's (Steven Kaplan) attempts to find a date for his prom. Though he is asked by his best friend, Camille (Alia Shawkat), Danny wants to hold out for the perfect girl—someone he can share his hotel room with after the dance. As he explains to his recently divorced parents (wonderfully played by Cheryl Hines and William H. Macy), everyone at the school is getting a room, even Bart, the biggest nerd on campus. "Bart got a room?" they ask incredulously on separate occasions, before agreeing to help Danny on his mission.

But what sounds like the premise for some Superbad gross-out fun actually turns out to be a sweet coming-of-age story with three-dimensional characters, clever writing, and appealing actors. Like his protagonist, Hecker was raised in a sleepy Florida town—"probably the most unhip environment a kid can possibly grow up in"—surrounded by retirees. He credits the wisdom and perspective he gleaned from spending time with his elders for helping him to create a fresh take on existential crises in a teenager's world.

How autobiographical is the script for Bart Got a Room?
It's definitely autobiographical. It's based on my pathetic existence as a total dweeb growing up in South Florida. For me, a dweeb has always been sort of a self-depreciating nerd. I wasn't a total nerd; I definitely had a sense of humor about my pathetic existence. I don't think the boy in the movie has as much of a sense of humor, so he's really sort of sad. Which, hopefully, makes it funnier, as comedy comes from pain. I think all this stuff we work out in writing comes from whatever you did or didn't get as a child. This story actually happened to me. I really had these delusions of grandeur about having a hot prom date, and my friend did ask me and I turned her down to ask this cute sophomore, who said no. My parents really were divorced and my dad and mom are really like that. But the image that started the whole thing was just thinking about the actual prom rejection itself. It's one thing to have a rejection and move past it quickly, it's another thing to get inside it and make it as painful as possible and really stretch it out. Because to me, a kid getting rejected for the prom has as much weight and value as a father losing his job and having to support his children. On a grand scale, from a mature perspective, how could you compare the two? But in that world, at that time, it feels like the worst thing that could possibly happen to you.

At first, it feels like the movie is set in another era, like the 1950s or '60s. But it's actually set in modern day.
I was definitely going for a timeless quality. And the environment down there is stuck in an earlier time; it has a dated sense about it. So I open up with Benny Goodman singing the swing-era classic "Sing, Sing, Sing." That environment is so shaped by the old people living there. It was a conscious choice to have the protagonist wearing a lot of old people's clothing. I wanted him to stand out, looking as unhip as possible.

Were you deliberately trying to stay away from current type of R-rated teen sex comedy so prevalent today?
I was very influenced by the John Hughes movies growing up, and he was somebody that didn't delve too deep into that gross-out humor we're seeing more and more of in the post-Hughes days. His movies were based on character and the situations themselves, as opposed to gags or sophomoric jokes. The characters are so complex and so interesting. My goal in setting out on this journey was to make a John Hughes movie with a Woody Allen flair. I consciously thought, "How would Woody Allen do a teen movie?" I started thinking about his music and downloaded every jazz piece that has ever existed in a Woody Allen movie, and that was a starting point for me.

Did you listen to the music for inspiration when you wrote?
Not necessarily, but I spent a lot of time listening to it when I was thinking about the movie, and it established the tone from the beginning and helped set the pace for the rest of the script.

Why is your title character only seen in one brief scene?
As people, we can get so hung up on things like what we feel we're supposed to accomplish at a certain age. We hold ourselves up to some unknown standard. Bart being an invisible entity was a calculated tactic to accentuate how absurd it is that our anxiety comes from things that aren't real. I've been getting into a lot of eastern philosophy in the last five years, and it all sort of taps into the same theme—that so much of our stress comes from things that we've been conditioned to think about, as opposed to an absolute reality. Bart is sort of a metaphor to exploit those themes.

Your attended the American Film Institute for your MFA, and your short film, Family Attraction, did well on the festival circuit. Did it provide any other opportunities?
It led to a three-picture writing-directing deal with Miramax, which was very exciting. But I learned the lesson hard and fast to be careful of the hype. It's kind of like the Emperor's New Clothes; you're told how fabulous you are, you start getting agents and managers interested in you, but there's nothing to back it up if you're not working. The lesson you learn is: never stop creating. Never stop being inspired and generative and working and producing and doing the things you love and staying connected to your values. You start to become dependent on "your team" and your ego gets in the way and it will slow you down and you won't create as much. And you have to keep creating. I was developing projects that never saw the light of day while trying to get Bart made since 1997. It's been a long journey.

How did you cope with such an ongoing frustration?
Obviously, you have to believe, you have to have what I call that "Obama faith." You can't ever lose hope. I've come to the conclusion that what it takes to get something to fruition is 33% talent and 33% being a good communicator and balancing egos and being able to talk to people and inspire people. And I think the final third ingredient is to have this obsessive tenacity and an insane amount of determination. I have so many friends who have a tremendous amount of talent, but it's only a third of the equation. And I know people who are insanely determined, but don't necessarily have the talent.

You're currently working with Craig Sherman on Atari, about Nolan Bushnell, the creator of Pong and Atari. How did you get Leonardo DiCaprio involved?
We took it to his production company and his producing partner, Jennifer Killoran, said, "This is a movie Leonardo would be interested in." It turned out he was interested in attaching himself as producer and star. And once he was attached, I've never been more respected in this business. It could be a movie about brushing your teeth, but if you have a star, the door is opened. In one day, my writing partner, Jennifer, and I pitched the president of every major studio, starting at 8 in the morning and ending at 7 pm. And ultimately, we went with Paramount.

Did you have a script when you were pitching?
No, we had a 45-minute pitch. Pitching, interestingly enough, is an art form unto itself. You have to write a story that's not necessarily going to be exactly like the script itself. The way you do a presentation and tell a story and entertain an audience, you're using hyperbole and narrative tricks that may not be conveyed in dialogue. It's exciting, but it's also frustrating. If you're not a good pitcher but a brilliant writer—well, all the studio executive cares about at the end of the day is if the script is good. But in order to even have the shot sometimes to do a script, you have to have a great pitch. So, we wrote out and memorized this 45-minute pitch. We incorporated a three-act structure into it. There was a back-and-forth, we even wrote in interruptions and tried to make it seem as authentic and fun and interesting as possible.

Do you have a preference between writing alone and writing with a partner?
I can't imagine in the foreseeable future that I will go back to writing alone. Working with my partner has been amazing. Writing with a partner you don't mesh with, that's a miserable experience, and I've done that, too. Writing alone can be very lonely, and it's hard to have discipline. And discipline is everything, because discipline can compensate for other things. If you can educate yourself and do the research on a project and just keep working the same sentence over and over again until it sounds good, you can really make up for talent.

What's the best thing about having a partner?
When you get notes from a studio executive, you have someone to commiserate with. If you don't have a healthy perspective, a writer can take the comments or critiques personally. The really successful writers don't take these things personally, I think. They know how to communicate properly. With a partner, it's the easiest way to get through that process, and it's fun, to boot. Because then you can collaborate and discuss what you heard, and it's not as personal anymore.

Jenelle Riley is a journalist and playwright living in Los Angeles. She enjoys good food and bad horror movies.



Brian Hecker, Bart Got a Room courtesy Anchor Bay Entertainment

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