Charlyne Yi stars alongside Michael Cera in Paper Heart, a warm, funny and truthful examination of the nature of love. A “hybrid documentary”, it blends reality and fiction in an innovative and engaging style. With the film coming out on DVD on 8th February (CLICK HERE to read our review) – just in time for Valentine’s Day – Yi took the time to talk to Tom Rene about ugly hats, tender-hearted bikers, and not OD’ing on drugs.
For readers who haven’t seen the film yet, could you say a few words about what it’s like?
I’m so bad at describing the film, to this day! I should have a better grasp on it. I guess it’s a half-documentary, half-fiction, about a girl named Charlyne Yi and her journey to make a documentary about love. And she’s a bit questioning of the idea of love, and... not so much jaded but she just keeps questioning it, and she goes on a journey, and meanwhile she meets a character named Michael Cera who tests if she really doesn’t believe in love or not. I think!
You co-wrote the film. How did the idea originate?
Well, originally it was going to be a straight documentary, and it was kind of inspired because I was 19, and I’d just gotten out of high school, and I was performing most of the time at comedy theatres. I found myself hanging out with much older men, other comedians who were like 40 and single, and I was like, “Oh boy, is that what’s gonna happen to me?” All I’d do is have a day job, and work all day, and perform at night, and come home and then turn on the TV, and on TV was this reality show, on which it was a man making out with two women, and they were my age, and I was like “Oh! Is that how kids get down these days? Oh God, I’m really out of the loop!”
I remember going back to the bar the next day to perform, and a stranger opened up to me about their love story, and I was like “Wow, this is a great story”, and I told my other comedian friend and they told their friend, and I was like, “Oh wow, this is a such a great story, it’s like old traditional stories where you can’t help but just pass it down, because you’re so excited about the story”. That kind of interested me, because I think there’s so many movies that make you feel something that’s about love and it’s fictional, and I thought, “What if you captured true love stories and made a documentary about that?” And hopefully the audience would be as affected as I was with the people that I had been meeting in real life.
That was the seed of it, and then I told Nick [Jasenovec, director]about the idea – we’d worked on a couple of comedy shorts before – and he was like, “Oh, you know what would be great is, ideally you’d be on camera, you would experience love first-hand, and that would be the turn of the documentary.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s not gonna happen, we don’t have enough time and I don’t feel comfortable with dating someone on camera, nor would I think it’d come off as natural, trying to have an intimate relationship”. So that kind of inspired ideas on creating a fictional portion. Really long answer!
Was everything decided before filming commenced or did your plans change as you went from location to location?
With the interviews, you could never tell what was going to happen or what we were going to use. Some of them were pre-interviewed, and some of the people were just spontaneous, like the bikers. Our hotel that we were supposed to be staying in had burnt down, so we stayed at this other hotel, and across the street was a bunch of bikes, motorcycles, and me and the director were like “Wow, we’ll make some friends tonight”. And we went down there, and there were women standing on the bar showing their boobs, everyone was yelling, there was a guy with an eye patch, everyone was wearing leather, and we came in the door and I had this really ridiculous Sherlock Holmes hat and I took it off because I didn’t want attention. As soon as we walked in, everyone looked at us, and it was like a bad movie, it was just quiet, and we stuck out, regardless of me taking off my hat. This large man with a beard and a leather vest came up to us and he goes up to Nick and he goes, “If I were you, I’d get the hell outta here”. And Nick was like, “Er, why?” And he goes, “Cos the fashion police is comin’ to get ya, man! And that’s one ugly-ass hat!”
It ended up being really nice, and they ended up embracing us, and they were like, “Obviously you guys are from out of town, what are you guys doing here?” We were like, “Oh, we’re making a documentary about love”, and they were like, “You should interview us, tomorrow”, and I was like “OK, we’ll come back tomorrow”. So that was a bit spontaneous, how we made friends with actual bikers. It was a bit intimidating, but they were really friendly.
Did it take a long time to select the interviews? Did you have a lot to choose from; did you have to cut a lot of comedy gold?
We did have a lot to choose from, but our interviews were so long – they were like three hours with each person – and so we hoped that with each person we would have at least something in there. There were some interviews that didn’t make it because they just didn’t work. But there was a lot of bad footage! Not everything was gold, we had over 300 hours of footage.
Of the material that is acted, how much of it was scripted and how much was improvised? It feels really spontaneous.
All the fictional stuff was just based off a five-page outline. So a lot was improvised, and it was quite terrifying!
Do you have a favourite moment, or any scenes that you’re particularly proud of?
One of my favourite moments is when the kids kind of turn the interview on me. That was really unexpected. They were so funny, they were pushing me around. That was one of my favourite moments, just hanging with those kids, they were so much fun. It made me realise how easy it is to make friends when you’re a kid, and they kind of just accept you and want to play with you – versus going up to a woman or a man like, “Hey, do you wanna be my friend? Do you wanna play?!”
They were pretty smart, too.
Yeah! The last boy, David, the one on the swings, he was quite wise.
To what extent is the version of you that we see in the film similar to the real you?
I think there’s two things that define the differences. One, Nick observed that I have the characteristics of a cartoon – really big, broad gestures – and he made me tone that down a lot. And also I think what defines a person or a character is their actions, and I would never sign up to film a personalised relationship on camera.
And I think a lot of times the character of Charlyne is introverted, where she doesn’t really say how she feels, she acts on how she feels; and I think I talk a lot. I talk about how I feel too much maybe!
Has making the film influenced your ideas about true love?
Yes. I didn’t think I was going to learn anything, just because going into the film, probably the message of this film - or one of the messages of the film - is that you could only learn through your own experiences, versus other people’s stories. But I think I felt going into the film – or just when I was young, when I was like “How am I supposed to meet people?” – I was a bit naive about, how do you know if it’s true love? And if you’re with someone for 50 years and it doesn’t work out, is that love? Or is it not love because it didn’t work out? And do just disregard your feelings for that many decades?
And I think I realised everything in life is uncertain, and your relationship with your family is unconditional – usually! – but relationships with your friends, you never know how long it’s going to last. And just because it doesn’t work out in the end doesn’t mean that it’s not true.
Do you find it easier to perform with comedians that you know well?
Sometimes, when improv’s really hard and you never know if a scene’s going to work or not. And I’ve improvised with people who weren’t my friends and sometimes it goes really well and sometimes not. But I think there’s a definite comfortability with me and Jake and Michael, just because we were all friends in advance, and I’d never done anything like this before. I’d never really acted besides having like two lines in a movie, and I’d never really improvised with other people until this movie. So it definitely felt safe because they knew what they were doing.
You and Michael [Cera] provide the soundtrack. How did that come about?
Me and Michael separately worked on music, and just as friends we’d been sending stuff to everyone, like to me, to him, to Nick, to Jake [M. Johnson, co-star], things that we’d been working on, during the time that we were working on the movie. And Nick was like, “Oh, you know what would be great, if you guys wrote the soundtrack too”, and we were like, “Oh, awesome, we’d love to!” And also, we didn’t have money to buy pop songs to add to the soundtrack as much as we would’ve liked.
Does being a musician inform your comedy, or do you view everything as one continuous endeavour? In your stage performances you combine the two.
I think I started playing music first, when I was in high school, and I realised I was somewhat bad with lyrics! So that became funny, almost on an embarrassing level. I found humour in my weakness, and I think that inspired me trying to perform without music and trying to challenge myself in that way.
How does the experience of making a movie relate to your stage performances?
A lot of times I like messing with the idea of reality, playing a version of myself onstage. I don’t know whether I’m sincere. There was one moment where I was really sincere recently. I performed in Dallas and I didn’t think anyone was going to show up. I’d never been to Dallas before, performing-wise. It was a really big theatre, and it looked like there were about ten people in the audience before I started, but when I came out there were like, at least a hundred. And I was supposed to do my act, and I’d bought pizza for everyone too, so I was like, “There’s too much pizza, there’s only like ten people here”. And I come out, and I say, “Hi everyone!”, and I start saying my act, and I stop, and I get kind of choked up, and I go, “Oh wow, people actually showed up! Thanks guys!” And I go, “Ignore this. Just ignore this. Anyways, back to the comedy!” And I went back into my act. I think that’s the only time I’ve ever been truly sincere onstage. Other than that, I think I play a version of myself of some sort.
Do you plan to focus on film more now?
I am writing a couple films right now with some friends, but I think after that I need a break. I’m writing four scripts right now for films! I’m enjoying it immensely, especially because I’m writing a few things not for myself, they’re for my friends, and so I don’t have to write to my very limited range of acting skills. So I’m really excited about some of those projects, and I think after that I’m going to take a break from writing just because I think I’m OD’ing on it, and I’ll venture into something else that’ll keep me occupied until I OD on that. Not drugs!
Are we ever likely to see you in a serious drama?
I don’t know if I could pull it off. I’d like to. I’d like to extend my range, but I think people would just end up laughing if I tried to do something very serious.
Finally, what can we expect from you next?
Well, nothing’s ever sure. I am working on two things that are under development. I’m working on a project with Nick and Jake from Paper Heart on a TV pilot for HBO, but we don’t know if it’s going to go or not. So possibly that. And I’m working with my friend Paul Rust on a script for Judd Apatow and Universal. Not sure if that’s going to go either, but we are getting paid for both projects and we are under development. So, hopefully – we’ll see what happens.
Thank you, Charlyne.
Paper Heart – on DVD 8th February – Anchor Bay Films
