Directors Tell a Funny Story

When filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden met nearly eleven years ago, the film they began working on was hardly fortuitous. They were film students at New York University and Columbia, respectively, and were working on a film together. This film was not “Sugar,” or “Half-Nelson,” or any other of the indie hits that would help them rapidly rise in the industry, but rather a student film that never even saw completion.

Fleck was assistant director and Boden was a production assistant. According to Fleck, he “got to tell people what to do” and he “wasn’t very good at it.” Apparently so, because one of his mistakes left her sitting on a truck in the rain.

Luckily, Boden forgave him. Eleven years and several collaborations later, they are promoting “It’s Kind of a Funny Story,” their film adaptation of Ned Vizzini’s novel of the same name, a dramedy about a depressed teenager who checks himself into a mental institution. With notable actors like comedian Zach Galifianakis (“The Hangover”) and Keir Gilchrist (“United States of Tara”) it’s clear that Boden and Fleck have come a long way.

“It’s Kind of a Funny Story” is a departure for the pair, who normally write their own material. “We didn’t know about the book,” says Boden. “We were given it by a producer and we loved it. I was laughing the whole way through it. It had such a wonderful main character who was so just open and earnest and relatable and we saw it as an opportunity to do something different that we also really loved.”

The film is also arguably their most commercial project yet. However, their approach was still holistic; describing the meticulous process, Fleck says, “We write the script and we’re constantly rewriting the script, tweaking little lines here, cutting lines there, and then we rehearse with the actors and really work with them to find out what’s not coming out of their mouths very smoothly. And then when you get all the actors together and rehearse it in front of the cameras, that’s when fun accidents happen.”

According to the filmmakers, the seasoned comedic cast, specifically Galifianakis, were responsible for the majority of these ‘accidents.’ Boden recounts how, “there were times when he had everyone cracking up so hard that you can actually see the camera shake in the handheld scenes because he’s got the camera operator laughing at his jokes.”

This is not to say that “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” is all superficial fun and games. “Another great thing about Zach is that it’s not just the comedy, but he’s so spontaneous even in the more dramatic scenes. It brings a lot of life to those scenes,” says Boden.

The producer for their past three films, including “It’s Kind of a Funny Story,” Jeremy Kipp Walker, echoes their sentiments about the film’s multi-faceted tone. “It’s a teen comedy in a way but it’s the best version of that, much more like the John Hughes-style films we all grew up enjoying. Not your average kind of gross-out, sex comedy. They put a lot of heart in it and pay real attention to characters and performances.”

Boden and Fleck’s unique style doesn’t end there. The pair is known for creating warm, familiar environments on set, however, they manage to do so while still keeping their personal lives from interfering with their professions; in fact, Fleck and Boden were romantically involved for several years. “Despite what’s happening on the personal side, as artists together they have a great collaboration,” says Walker.

When asked about Boden and Fleck’s future, Walker is hesitant to predict a particular path for the pair; whether they will return to the lower-budgeted, independent films that paved the way to this eight-million dollar comedy-drama, or if “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” is only the beginning of their more mainstream career together. “I think for them, whether they continue down the commercial road or they do more avant-garde work, I think that it’s always going to have that signature style of just integrity and authenticity,” says Walker.

The assistant director of their past three films, Mariela Comitini, is more vocal about Boden and Fleck, who she describes as two of her favorite directors. “They’re just only going to get bigger and bigger, but the quality and the spirit of their films will still remain the same,” she predicts.

“I think they’re going to blow up,” Comitini adds.