Life, death and movies: Inside ‘Me and Earl and the Dying Girl’

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon says he was "introverted and a bit of an outsider as a kid" — not unlike Greg Gaines, the "me" in the comedy-drama "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl."

And, like Greg, "I discovered a lot of life through movies as a kid," said Gomez-Rejon, who directed "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl," which won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival and opens in Salt Lake City-area theaters Friday.

Greg (played by Thomas Mann) learns about film with his friend Earl (RJ Cyler), with whom he watches cinema classics and makes deliberately dumb parody versions of them. But Greg learns about life when he reluctantly begins a friendship with Rachel (Olivia Cooke), a classmate undergoing treatment for leukemia.

Gomez-Rejon had not read Jesse Andrews' young-adult novel when he signed on to make the film. He had read Andrews' screenplay adaptation of the book and was impressed with his writing.

"It treated adolescents and teenagers with honesty and respect," Gomez-Rejon said recently in a phone interview from Austin, Texas. "The humor was so specific and so hilarious, and universal. I identify with Greg, and Thomas Mann identifies with Greg, and there's a 20-year gap between us."

Mann, who had auditioned for Gomez-Rejon for a previous movie (and didn't get the part), was similarly impressed with the script. "It was so honest, in the way teenagers actually speak to each other," he said. "I liked that Greg didn't see this as a beautiful, poignant time in his life. It was awkward and uncomfortable, and he doesn't say the right things. That really rang true with me. I wasn't annoyed with the characters, I enjoyed spending time with them, which make the heavier moments really resonate."

Mann, 23, describes Greg as "more or less an average teenager. … I still very much related to Greg, even the less admirable parts of him. He's selfish and stubborn, in a lot of ways that teenagers are. I wanted to take that journey with him and grow up with him."

Cooke, 21, said the script appealed to her because of "just how funny it was, how it didn't talk down to teenagers, how it wasn't stereotypical, how authentic it was. I would have done anything to be any part of this film."

The key was to play Rachel as a person, not as a collection of symptoms.

"On paper, she maybe could sound like a victim or a tragic character," Cooke said, speaking in the Manchester accent she keeps well hidden onscreen. "People may have been inclined to play the disease full-blown, and the physicality of it, and she becomes really flat. She's everything but that. She's very strong. She knows who she is. She's confident, she likes herself, she is selfless. Those are all the qualities I wanted to play."

Mann and Cooke went through rigorous auditions to land the roles of Greg and Rachel so that Gomez-Rejon was sure "they had the right chemistry," he said. "They had a beautiful friendship, and it was about that — there was a deep connection."

Mann and Cooke have fairly extensive acting credits — he starred in the party comedy "Project X" and appeared in another 2015 Sundance title, "The Stanford Prison Experiment"; she was the lead in the horror-thriller "Ouija" and played Norman Bates' girlfriend on TV's "Bates Motel." This was Cyler's first starring role.

Gomez-Rejon saw an audition tape of Cyler just a couple of weeks before shooting was to start in Pittsburgh. Without an Earl, the production wouldn't go on. "They were about to pull the plug on us," the director said.

"I was the last cookie in the jar," Cyler said, deadpan.

Rounding out the cast is an ensemble of powerful actors playing the adults in these people's lives: Connie Britton and Nick Offerman as Greg's parents, Molly Shannon as Rachel's wine-tippling mom, and Jon Bernthal as Greg and Earl's wise history teacher.

"What I liked about the adults," Gomez-Rejon said, "is that we were showing them as real people. Eccentric, to be sure, but there's also some flawed parenting involved."

Gomez-Rejon and Cooke did their research regarding cancer. In the script notes, the director said, they had written down what phase of treatment Rachel was experiencing in each scene. Before shooting, Cooke spent an afternoon with a teen who had the same type of leukemia as Rachel, and with her doctors.

A key scene for Cooke ended up not being used in the film: when Rachel (and Cooke) got her hair chopped off. Gomez-Rejon filmed the moment, with Cooke in character, thinking it might be used.

"That was very emotional when she did this," the director said. "To see her transform, there becomes a moment where Rachel becomes Olivia, and Olivia becomes Rachel. … It really informs an actress's decisions."

"I had a bit of vodka beforehand," Cooke said of shooting the scene. "It definitely got a bit overwhelming and a bit emotional. … That was the best thing I did to get into character and to really feel the emotions that I was supposed to feel in that moment. It was the biggest cheat for me, to convey what Rachel was really going through."

Making "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" has been cathartic for Gomez-Rejon, whose father (to whom the movie is dedicated) died just before the director read Andrews' script.

"He's the reason why I wanted to make the movie," Gomez-Rejon said. "When I read the script, I thought I had an opportunity to talk about him, and make something for him, the way Greg was making something for Rachel — something that would express a deep love and gratitude, and celebrate him and his sense of humor, and that great friendship, by making a movie for him."

spmeans@sltrib.com

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