Los Angeles — Working behind the camera for some time wasn’t very appealing to Cooper Leif.
“I didn’t want to be a director,” he said. “When someone says he wants to supervise, I say,” Who do you think you are? “
But at the age of 25, despite overkill actors, writers, and his previous feelings, the director created two bittersweet personal features that have attracted the attention of both critics and the industry. rice field.
“I didn’t like the director’s idea because the director really needs to get everyone together and gain trust between the teams. It’s not my comfort zone,” he said. “But I’m really good at making people want to be around me. I don’t want to be alone.”
Now Leif made a movie that people would want to spend time with, and there he confirmed his profession. His sophomore effort, “ChaChaRealSmooth,” won the Audience Award at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and was purchased by Apple for $ 15 million. The company led the previous acquisition of Sundance, “CODA,” to Oscar’s Best Work Award earlier this year.
The comedy seijin-shiki drama “Chacharial Smooth” (theatre and Apple TV +) revolves around Andrew (Leif), a recent college graduate who was hired as a party starter for Bar Mitzwar and was involved in a hilarious friendship with Domino. increase. (Dakota Johnson), a mother of a teenager with autism in her thirties.
In a recent interview at a restaurant in the Westwood section of the city, Leif pervades his work, wearing a dark green hoodie and casual clothing that contrasts with the luxury atmosphere of the facility. It produces the same fascinating melancholy as.
While he repeatedly ran his hands on his hair, the young storyteller spoke eagerly to bypass the little story in support of the vulnerability.
“If you ask me,’Where are you when you’re 25?'” “I hope you’re happy with what you want to do,” Leif said. “This year can be terribly unhappy with certain things in life. The two films I made were objectively successful because we made money with them, but they succeed. That doesn’t help my dad’s problem. It doesn’t let me through all day. “
The Dallas native spent many of his teens in a local acting studio before he reluctantly realized he was calling a shot. At that time, he wanted performance to be a mode of his main involvement in filmmaking.
Writing as a high school senior when new drama teacher Catherine Hopkins encouraged him to do so and provided prompts and feedback until he finished and embarked on the first school play with her help. It became his authority.
“Bless her soul, she has read some of the most silly things ever,” Reif said. “But she really helped me become a writer.” Hopkins said kind words about his functional debut, but she was a playwright instead of her former student. I believe that I secretly want that.
Longing to enter the industry, Reif moved to Los Angeles to attend Occidental College. Still set in his acting career, he regularly attended casting calls until an audition for a UCLA short film that required a stereotypical Texas draw defeated him. “Then I said,’I can’t do this anymore. It’s not good for my morale,” he recalled.
After that, Leif returned to writing. He put together the entire season of the episode series, but he wanted to make it someday and he sent the email to every agent he found online. Not surprisingly, his one-sided submission did not gain any traction.
“I realized that no one was going to read mine. At that time, when I was in my second year of college during the spring holidays, I thought that people were more likely to see something than to read something, I made this crappy movie, “he explained.
The amateur venture, entitled “Madeline and Cooper,” followed the accident of a college freshman Quartey, who led him and his girlfriend and shot with equipment borrowed from college. Raiff, a fan of the TV series “Togetherness,” tweeted to co-creator Jay Duplass and dared to watch the student’s project on YouTube.
“I said,’You won’t click this link and email me later.’ He sent me an email and said he won the bet, then we Had lunch, “said Reif. “I was in a very low position when I tweeted him because I showed his parents a movie, and they didn’t really like it.”
Dupras saw the possibility. “Within minutes, his sensibility for making films turned out to be very natural,” Dupras said in a telephone interview. “It had an emotional maturity, which I think is characteristic of Cooper’s work.”
For the next nine months, the two will meet regularly as mentors and mentees to hone the script for Leif’s “Madeline and Cooper” as part of an informal crash course into independent, budget-efficient filmmaking. I did. As the project materialized, Raiff suggested that nearly 12 directors take over, but eventually had to step into that role. That means you won’t graduate from college.
“I lied to my parents and said,” Jay thinks it’s okay for me to drop out. ” That wasn’t true, but I finally relied on us to make the movie. And we did, but Dad wasn’t happy. “
The resulting film, Sithouse, was a professionally produced version of his original student film that won a grand jury award at the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2020 and was sold to IFC Films. Given how cheap it was achieved, Leif made a fair amount of money and was enough for his father to consider his path economically feasible.
In “Chacharial Smooth,” Reif opposed the idea of replaying in his film.But his producer Tea Time Photo, Dakota Johnson and Lo Donnelly were convinced that no one else was suitable for this part. “He wrote Andrew for himself,” Johnson said on the phone. “Then I wanted someone else to play him, but that can’t really happen.”
Unknown to the production team, Raiff didn’t write a single page when he first met. He is good at animating other people’s parties, but sold them with the concept of a lovingly drifting young man who doesn’t know how to start his life.
“Cooper is very careful. He notices a small detail that no one else is doing anything about someone’s personality or body language,” Johnson invites her to co-produce the film and co-star with Leif. I mentioned what I did. “When someone is making a movie, I think it’s a really valuable feature.”
Shortly after the world premiere of the movie in January, it was announced that Apple had secured global distribution rights. “Cooper captured our imagination at the Sundance Film Festival in a script about the beauty of relationships in all outfits,” said Matt Dentler, head of function for Apple’s original film, in an email. I am saying.
So far, both Reif’s scripts have focused on transitional cases in an early understanding of the self-determination of his protagonist (and himself).
“Change is a good way to say something about people,” Leif said. “In the first movie, I wanted to talk about the pain of leaving home and growing up. And” Chacha “can understand who you are if you’re lucky. It’s about what your 20s are doing this time around. “
When he felt that his inner holiday had finally begun, Leif revealed what had happened when he decided to take charge of the conflicting feelings towards his parents.
“My party started when I sat down on my butt for treatment, like a month and a half ago,” he said. “I made a movie about what your twenties should be for, but I didn’t know what they should be for. I didn’t get the answer in the end, so I made that movie It was easy to make. “
With enough security in his oversight ability, Reef is cautiously optimistic about the current situation, both personally and professionally.
“Now I like the director more than writing. I’ve only been doing it for 40 days, so I’m very inexperienced,” he said with a laugh.
With that in mind, I asked him when and how he thought he would reach adulthood. “When you understand who you are, it’s when you grow up. When you can take responsibility for yourself and others,” he said, and the movie “Lars and the Real Girl” appeared. I pulled out his phone to look for a quote about a person’s maturity. It reads:
“There are still kids inside, but when you decide to do it right, you grow up. And even when it hurts, it’s not right for you, it’s right for everyone.”
Leif’s next outing, a true story-based father and son story set in the world of hockey, continues to tackle the dynamics of self-assertive interpersonal relationships. But he’s taking things slowly, making time to get away from the set and find fulfillment: writing around a loved one or alone.
“When Chacha went well, the first thing I felt was relief. I’ll be able to make another movie,” he recalled. “It feels like a success for me to get something, because I know I’ll be comfortable doing what I love, no matter how long next time.”
