Blitz Escapes Bind, Learns Science

If you’ve ever heard of Jeffrey Blitz, it’s probably in connection with his work as writer and director of the Oscar-nominated documentary “Spellbound,” the gripping tale of eight spelling whiz kids as they make their way to the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Since that critically acclaimed debut, Blitz has worked on a new project—the narrative fiction film “Rocket Science,” opening nationwide on Aug. 17.

In an interview last month at the Eliot Hotel in Boston, Blitz said that despite his success as a documentary filmmaker straight out of film school going from documentary to narrative fiction was a natural choice after “Spellbound.”

“I think that even before I did ‘Spellbound,’ I wanted to see myself as a visual storyteller,” he says. “So I ended up doing ‘Spellbound’ first because I wanted to be in control of a project straight out of film school...I didn’t see myself as a documentary filmmaker, just a filmmaker.”

He described his most recent experience as one radically different from “Spellbound.” In contrast with the Picturehouse and HBO Films-produced “Rocket Science,” his first movie involved a very small production team with producer Sean Welch and was largely financed using credit cards.

Also unlike “Spellbound,” Blitz says that “Rocket Science” is not a film about winning, or even competition. Instead, he says that his new film “uses the backdrop of debate to give you a window into the life of this kid, but you know in the end, ‘Rocket Science’ isn’t hanging its hat on the competition.”

Instead, he says that the movie explores the personalities of the stuttering underdog Hal, the overly ambitious debate team champ Ginny, and Hal’s friend Heston, who all deal with the absurdities of life in their own characteristic ways.

Heston appears as though “he comes from another planet,” Blitz says, “but I believe that all of the characters are pushed. Ginny is pushed to feel like she’s unreal in her ambition and she’s hyper-articulate [in a way] that’s unreal.”

Blitz acknowledges that the premise of “Rocket Science” was inspired from his own background. Like the main protagonist Hal Hefner, Blitz struggled with stuttering growing up and joined the debate team in high school. However, he says that he drew most from his own memories from the “emotional reality” of stuttering, rather than any specific autobiographical details.

“I was [once] going through a time when my speech had completely broken down, and I had trouble speaking on the phone, and it was very easy to access the pain and the comedy of that,” he says. “Very early in the process, I stopped thinking about it as my own life, and I never felt beholden to the actual facts as they went down.

“I wasn’t lured on by an attractive, hyper-articulate girl. [Joining debate] was my own bad choice,” he says.

In developing the distinctively playful-yet-disturbing sound for “Rocket Science,” Blitz says he elicited the services of musician Eef Barzelay. He listened to the songs of the New Jersey musician while writing, and “I felt that the spirit of the music seeped into the script,” he says.

Ultimately, he hired Barzelay to develop a “soundtrack to Hal” that reflected the main protagonist’s confused, angst-ridden life in its ensemble of instruments—which included the accordion, cello, and banjo.

With two films under his belt, Blitz jumps right back into filming after the “Rocket Science” promo tour. After wrapping up production on another documentary about jackpot winners and the lottery, he plans to return to directing episodes of the Emmy-winning NBC comedy “The Office.”

—Staff writer Andrew E. Lai can be reached at lai@fas.harvard.edu.