Film Commentary

Just another film blog run by a few people dedicated to providing you with some interesting commentary from multiple movies that we are interested in.

A tagging system will be set up for convenience as soon as possible, so bear with us a bit.
The coolest thing about this movie from the writers standpoint I guess is it did start out from a place of anger. It was set out to be like who was this bitch that broke my heart, I’m gonna take her down and I’m gonna write the movie for all the dumped people or whatever. And it’s really like the learning curve of the writing of it is totally parallel to what the character learns and hits its peak in this scene, which is fiction, but which culminates, you know, no one is the bad guy here. No one did anything wrong. You can’t, you can’t say, you can’t fault me for just not feeling the way you felt. And it was a great thing for me to learn and it’s a relief and I think it works and it’s powerful because it’s true. Scott Neustadter, co-writer of 500 Days of Summer

The coolest thing about this movie from the writers standpoint I guess is it did start out from a place of anger. It was set out to be like who was this bitch that broke my heart, I’m gonna take her down and I’m gonna write the movie for all the dumped people or whatever. And it’s really like the learning curve of the writing of it is totally parallel to what the character learns and hits its peak in this scene, which is fiction, but which culminates, you know, no one is the bad guy here. No one did anything wrong. You can’t, you can’t say, you can’t fault me for just not feeling the way you felt. And it was a great thing for me to learn and it’s a relief and I think it works and it’s powerful because it’s true.

Scott Neustadter, co-writer of 500 Days of Summer

Talk about cliches and how to navigate them, this is such a cliche thing, the big speech towards the end of the movie where the guy kind of does his soliloquy thing and the way you guys wrote it I remember when I read this script well I recognize this strophe this is the speech at the end, but you know what, this is actually good. This isn’t gratuitous, I actually like this, and I want to say this.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt, on the commentary track for 500 Days of Summer

Talk about cliches and how to navigate them, this is such a cliche thing, the big speech towards the end of the movie where the guy kind of does his soliloquy thing and the way you guys wrote it I remember when I read this script well I recognize this strophe this is the speech at the end, but you know what, this is actually good. This isn’t gratuitous, I actually like this, and I want to say this. 

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, on the commentary track for 500 Days of Summer

Reality and expectation, this is a tricky sequence to shoot but it’s totally like a manifestation of the world you expect colliding with the world that you encounter. And this, there’s a lot of strategical difficulties because you had to match the timing of both these sequences but you also had to instruct the audience, or let the audience experience this without confusion them because it’s really important narrative information that’s being shown here, particularly at the end of the scene, but you didn’t want to lose them. Commentary by Director Marc Webb, for 500 Days of Summer

Reality and expectation, this is a tricky sequence to shoot but it’s totally like a manifestation of the world you expect colliding with the world that you encounter. And this, there’s a lot of strategical difficulties because you had to match the timing of both these sequences but you also had to instruct the audience, or let the audience experience this without confusion them because it’s really important narrative information that’s being shown here, particularly at the end of the scene, but you didn’t want to lose them.

Commentary by Director Marc Webb, for 500 Days of Summer

This is from one summer at camp. The best writing we’ve ever. Just have a scene where someone says ‘penis’ repeatedly for two and a half pages. What were we saying, when we were doing ADR on this scene, we did the looping, they make us say something else that’s suitable for airlines. They always want you to say something that’s kind of uh- You can’t see penis on airlines? Apparently not. Don’t say panda! There’s children around! Malarkey instead of shit. People are watching, they might say panda! Commentary by Director Marc Webb, Writer Michael Weber, Writer Scott Neustadter, and Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for 500 Days of Summer

This is from one summer at camp. The best writing we’ve ever. Just have a scene where someone says ‘penis’ repeatedly for two and a half pages.

What were we saying, when we were doing ADR on this scene, we did the looping, they make us say something else that’s suitable for airlines. They always want you to say something that’s kind of uh-

You can’t see penis on airlines?

Apparently not. Don’t say panda! There’s children around! Malarkey instead of shit. People are watching, they might say panda!

Commentary by Director Marc Webb, Writer Michael Weber, Writer Scott Neustadter, and Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for 500 Days of Summer

This sequence choreographed by Michael Rooney. Everybody is in blue which is a sort of nod to our color pallette choice which is taking out all the primary colors including blue unless someone was around. This is the only scene you see the color blue without Zooey. Joe, how long did you have to rehearse this? I think that two days before we did it, they taught it to me, and uh yeah. This might have been one of the best days of my life ever, honestly. Well, I mean ever since I was eight years old or younger watching Michael Jackson and everyone wants to be the guy who gets to dance in front of the dancers who are all doing the same thing as you and I never thought I would get to do that. I remember after one take you came over and saw me and gave me a hug and said thank you this is really a highlight. Commentary by Director Marc Webb, Writer Michael Weber, Writer Scott Neustadter, and Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for 500 Days of Summer

This sequence choreographed by Michael Rooney. Everybody is in blue which is a sort of nod to our color pallette choice which is taking out all the primary colors including blue unless someone was around. This is the only scene you see the color blue without Zooey.

Joe, how long did you have to rehearse this?

I think that two days before we did it, they taught it to me, and uh yeah. This might have been one of the best days of my life ever, honestly. Well, I mean ever since I was eight years old or younger watching Michael Jackson and everyone wants to be the guy who gets to dance in front of the dancers who are all doing the same thing as you and I never thought I would get to do that.

I remember after one take you came over and saw me and gave me a hug and said thank you this is really a highlight.

Commentary by Director Marc Webb, Writer Michael Weber, Writer Scott Neustadter, and Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for 500 Days of Summer

This was 5AM, this was a really hard scene for me because it’s so much of the rooting interest as them for a couple is based on a scene, and it reminds me also of that scene in West Side Story where they’re like pretending to be in the wedding shop, it sort of channels that in a way. And Rebel Without a Cause as well. Yeah, yep. Exactly, there’s this sort of notion of these guys playing house and I think it’s Tom’s domestic fantasy, he’s sort of leading the way like ‘Maybe we could live like this’ and he’s being sort of ironical but I think there’s something that’s really hopeful about it. Commentary by Director Marc Webb, Writer Michael Weber, Writer Scott Neustadter, and Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for 500 Days of Summer

This was 5AM, this was a really hard scene for me because it’s so much of the rooting interest as them for a couple is based on a scene, and it reminds me also of that scene in West Side Story where they’re like pretending to be in the wedding shop, it sort of channels that in a way.

And Rebel Without a Cause as well.

Yeah, yep. Exactly, there’s this sort of notion of these guys playing house and I think it’s Tom’s domestic fantasy, he’s sort of leading the way like ‘Maybe we could live like this’ and he’s being sort of ironical but I think there’s something that’s really hopeful about it.

Commentary by Director Marc Webb, Writer Michael Weber, Writer Scott Neustadter, and Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for 500 Days of Summer

We fought very hard for Young Werther. That was uh, every series of notes we got from the studio was like ‘cut the young Werther joke.’ The fact that we can do a young Werther reference in this sort of mainstream— What does it reference? It’s Goethe. He was the first unrequited love protagonist probably ever put on paper. And then he killed himself. The end. Yeah, it’s kind of a sad story. There was like a rash of copycat suicides after. Yeah cause it was the exact same thing like, it made it to print and everyone related to it in a way and it was like oh my god I’ve been waiting for something like this now I’m gonna kill myself Commentary by Director Marc Webb, Writer Michael Weber, Writer Scott Neustadter, and Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for 500 Days of Summer

We fought very hard for Young Werther. That was uh, every series of notes we got from the studio was like ‘cut the young Werther joke.’

The fact that we can do a young Werther reference in this sort of mainstream—

What does it reference?

It’s Goethe. He was the first unrequited love protagonist probably ever put on paper. And then he killed himself. The end. Yeah, it’s kind of a sad story.

There was like a rash of copycat suicides after.

Yeah cause it was the exact same thing like, it made it to print and everyone related to it in a way and it was like oh my god I’ve been waiting for something like this now I’m gonna kill myself

Commentary by Director Marc Webb, Writer Michael Weber, Writer Scott Neustadter, and Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for 500 Days of Summer

“This really happened.”“Did it really? How much of the movie happened in real life?”“I would say 75% of it actually happened.”“Was it actually this Smiths song?” “Yeah, yeah. It sure was. I have…I can’t wear those big headphones though because my head is very oddly shaped and so I had smaller headphones.” “Wearing big headphones is one of the joys of my life.” “Everything else is accurate though. Every time you find the Smiths as your common ground, that relationship is doomed to die. Nothing good is coming out of that.” Commentary by Director Marc Webb, Writer Michael Weber, Writer Scott Neustadter, and Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for 500 Days of Summer

“This really happened.”

“Did it really? How much of the movie happened in real life?”

“I would say 75% of it actually happened.”

“Was it actually this Smiths song?”

“Yeah, yeah. It sure was. I have…I can’t wear those big headphones though because my head is very oddly shaped and so I had smaller headphones.”

“Wearing big headphones is one of the joys of my life.”

“Everything else is accurate though. Every time you find the Smiths as your common ground, that relationship is doomed to die. Nothing good is coming out of that.”

Commentary by Director Marc Webb, Writer Michael Weber, Writer Scott Neustadter, and Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for 500 Days of Summer

Webb: There’s Joe in the-JGL: I’m in that scene!Webb: Yeah, Joe’s the guy in the back of the line, and there’s Zooey.Neustadter/Weber: Interesting, I never knew that. I didn’t know that either!JGL: Yeah my arm looks really good. Commentary by Director Marc Webb, Writer Michael Weber, Writer Scott Neustadter, and Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for 500 Days of Summer

Webb: There’s Joe in the-
JGL: I’m in that scene!
Webb: Yeah, Joe’s the guy in the back of the line, and there’s Zooey.
Neustadter/Weber: Interesting, I never knew that. I didn’t know that either!
JGL: Yeah my arm looks really good.

Commentary by Director Marc Webb, Writer Michael Weber, Writer Scott Neustadter, and Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for 500 Days of Summer

Can we talk about Regina Spektor for a second? I just think it’s very important to set up that the big lesson we’re going to learn is that no one’s a bad guy in this movie. And it’s very helpful to see two people kind of growing up separately, they’re gonna intertwine, and they’re gonna have a connection but there is that kind of demarcation that will always be there and this sort of sets that up so perfectly. And Regina’s song is titled ‘Us’. Both of her songs feel like they were written for this really. Commentary by Scott Neustadter and Marc Webb, writer of 500 Days of Summer

Can we talk about Regina Spektor for a second? I just think it’s very important to set up that the big lesson we’re going to learn is that no one’s a bad guy in this movie. And it’s very helpful to see two people kind of growing up separately, they’re gonna intertwine, and they’re gonna have a connection but there is that kind of demarcation that will always be there and this sort of sets that up so perfectly. And Regina’s song is titled ‘Us’. Both of her songs feel like they were written for this really.

Commentary by Scott Neustadter and Marc Webb, writer of 500 Days of Summer