One Day with Zooey and Joe

"This is not a love story. It's a story about love.. " That's the tag-line on the posters for 500 Days of Summer, a breath of fresh-air film that tosses all the rom-com cliches to the curb in favor of feelings... real, relatable feelings about love. Young co-stars Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt have that genuine, un-manufactured chemistry both on screen and in person. Can't fake it. You've got it or you don't.

Story goes, hopeful romantic Tom, once an architect wannabe who is now bored silly with his job writing greeting card copy, falls ultra-hard for new gal in the office Summer, who is not up for a serious relationship. Of course, things don't work out after a mad courtship and Tom mentally flashbacks through his 500 days with Summer to figure out what went wrong and, along the way, rediscovers where his true passions in life lie.

Zooey and Joe have been blogging and tweeting all over the net about an upcoming dance video they are doing together (since Zooey didn't get to dance in the film and Joe did). We've not found it yet but we got a picture Joe posted and we like the idea!

These two are just really cute together. During our interview at a posh hotel in Santa Monica. Ca, they turned to talk to each other as much as with us. Maybe there is nothing romantic going on here but we're at least sure they are great pals. We wanted their take on their characters, the film's off-beat romance, their friendship, Joe's dance in the movie, Zooey's music, etc. Joe is dapper in thin-stripe dress shirt with white collar and black pants. Zooey is wearing an adorable, old-fashioned, satin rose-colored bib dress with lots of ruffles but she's cold and puts on her black sweater.

Joe: It's a good thing you've got that. Put it on, take it off...one of those things.

TeenHollywood: Zooey, speaking of clothes, did you have any input into your wardrobe in the film? You wear some cute stuff.

Zooey: Oh yes. We had an amazing costume designer Hope Hanafin but yeah, I always have pretty strong opinions on what my character wears.

TeenHollywood: Joe, your director said that, of all the actors that came in for the part, you were the most concerned about why they were making this film because it isn't a typical romantic comedy. How did he convince you to be a part of it?

Joe: When Marc [Webb] and I spoke, it became really clear that he was interested in telling an honest and genuine story about human beings as opposed to thin plot devices. The movie that I didn't want to be in was the one where 'oh, see, it's a reversal. The girl's like the guy and the guy is like the girl and all those rules still apply but it's it weird that's it's reversed?' That, I didn't want to be in. But I did want to be in something where here is one individual. Here is another individual and love is complicated and hilarious and sad and beautiful'. That's more like the conversation that Marc and I had. It was also that I just liked the guy. I wanted to make friends with him. I wanted to make a movie with him.

TeenHollywood: Marc said he asked Joe who he wanted to co-star with in the movie and he said you and his eyes lit up [she laughs and they high five]. And you were like 'nobody's going to make a movie with us'. But you guys are terrific in this film.

Zooey: That's so nice because I really like doing press for this movie and a lot of times you'll do press and you're like 'oooooh, I have to lie again'. I'm not saying that there aren't movies that I do that I certainly love. I've been so lucky but it's rare that a movie is my taste. Sometimes you'll do a movie and know 'I recognize that that's cool but it's not my taste'. This is a movie that is my taste.

TeenHollywood: How strange was it to work again together after all these years (note: Manic, 2001), and did you keep up with each other in between?

Joe: Yeah.

Zooey: Yeah. We've been friends for ten years. It was awesome to get to work with Joe again.

Joe: I think it's a big part of why the scenes turned out.

Zooey: I agree.

Joe: We trust each other. I know her sense of humor. It made it easy.

Zooey: You're only as good as the actor you're working with.

Joe: Yeah. You're screwed if the other person is ...

Zooey: Yeah. It's a one hundred percent collaborative [effort]. If you're doing it by yourself and you're not paying attention to what's going on then I don't know what that is but it's not my experience of acting.

TeenHollywood: Zooey, as interesting as the poster is, would you be upset if they found it in some guy's basement? [note: poster is a huge montage of pics of her face].

Joe: [laughs] I love the poster.

Zooey: I love the poster. [we hand her a promotional mini-poster with a map of downtown L.A. inside. She unfolds it] Oooo, there's a map?

TeenHollywood: Yeah, of all the places the characters go.

Joe: That's so cool!

Zooey: It is cool!

TeenHollywood: There's a picnic blanket too.

Zooey: I got one! I got a picnic blanket and a beach ball. [She starts looking at the map]. This is so right up my alley.

TeenHollywood: Zooey, your character is sort of having a friends with benefits relationship with Joe's character. Are you concerned that teens might stick that label on the relationship?

Zooey: That unromantic? I don't know about that.

Joe: No. I think that's a label that kids won't put on it. I think that sort of categorization is what this movie is evidence that we're getting over. Love and romance can exist without fitting into solid boxes like that.

TeenHollywood: I think it's about not using labels.

Joe: Yeah.

TeenHollywood: Zooey, the movie is all told from Joe's character's perspective. Was that harder for you to enact?

Zooey: I didn't really worry about it. It's a very, very subjective film. I just tried to play the scenes as truthfully as possible. I had to keep her grounded in my reality of her which was different from the reality of the film so that was my job to protect her integrity as a character.

TeenHollywood: The movie is from the view of this guy who is deifying this person so you're playing a myth.

Zooey: Exactly.

TeenHollywood: Do you think your character misleads Tom at all or no? In the beginning you say you want something casual and nothing more but, at one point, it was clear Tom was really into you but you never said that you were dating someone else.

Zooey: My job is like I'm the lawyer for Summer [laughter]. That's my job. Seriously, it's my job to represent her point of view as an actor so it's hard to look back and give you my opinion on it. It's a deeply subjective film and not from Summer's point of view. If this was 500 Days of Tom, it would be a totally different film.

Joe: Yeah, and so that wedding scene, where you might have felt it was a little misleading, I think what that says is that Tom is perhaps misleading himself more than Summer's misleading him.

Zooey: Right. Also, I think it's one of these films where, I've seen it three times, and each time you see it you get a different point of view. You see different things in the scenes. That's one thing that's cool. Even being in the film and having been there on the day, I'm seeing new things that I didn't remember, or didn't know about.

TeenHollywood: It's obvious that he's in love with her from the beginning but what does she feel for him?

Zooey: I think, it's not really that important for me to answer that question because I feel like this movie, especially, is something where it's the audience's job to take away from it what they want to. If I say anything, as the actor, that would just be my opinion. You can take what you will from it. But, I do think she has deep affection for him.

TeenHollywood: Joe, can you talk about the dance sequence?

Joe: Yeah, the best morning ever. I loved doing it so much. The movie is, like she was saying, subjective. It's more about how love feels from one person's point of view than how it is objectively. So, I've been there and I imagine you have to. When you first get to sleep with this person that you've been infatuated with for a long time, when you're walking home, maybe to an objective passerby, it may just look like you're waking home with a smile on your face but it feels like the world is dancing with you.

Zooey: My favorite part is when you look in the mirror and see.....

Joe: Han Solo?

Zooey: Han Solo.

TeenHollywood: With that shit-eating grin on his face.

Joe: Yeah.

TeenHollywood: So you are shooting a little separate dance video too which, I guess, we can see?

Joe: Yeah, it was too tragic that Zooey wasn't in my dance number.

Zooey: It was an idea that Marc had while we were shooting that we would do a dance sequence for a promo. He felt like that would be a cool idea and we both loved it and then we didn't get to do it while we were shooting the film. Then, a number of months ago, we were all together and I think we were like 'Marc, when's that dance sequence gonna happen?' I was [saying that] because I was like [pouting voice] 'I want to dance too'. And really it was total vanity because I think that dancing is fun. Not because I'm some amazing dancer or something.

Joe: You're a pretty good dancer though.

Zooey: Thank you. So are you. So we did it and it was really fun. What was cool was there were no doubles. It was all us and Joe can do an amazing front flip, no seriously.

Joe: No I can't.

Zooey: Well, weren't you doing a back hand-spring?

Joe: A round-off.

Zooey: You did a round-off and a back handspring.

Joe: You can tap dance.

Zooey: I did do the splits.

Joe: And the splits. It's true.

Zooey: And it was all us which was cool. I'm certainly not gonna get hired on some pro Broadway tour and I'm not doing 'Dancing with the Stars' [laughter] but it was fun.

Joe: It's really just gratuitous dancing. It's going to be on the internet in like a week. It'll be all over on the internet.

Zooey: It's actually a song from my record. We were trying to figure out what song to set it to and I guess Marc was listening to different things and he was like hey, can we use your song?' and I was like 'yeah!' Can't say no to the guy. He's so adorable.

Joe: I just kept thinking 'what must that be like?' This was a song you wrote yourself and then you recorded it and have played it in concerts and stuff and now we're doing this whole short little dance to it.

Zooey: That was the coolest thing. The coolest thing, let me tell you, was seeing Michael Rooney, the choreographer, who also did the dance sequence in the movie, working down the beats of the song. He's like 'right here, you're doing this and right here' and I'm like 'my song. I wrote that beat'. That was cool!

TeenHollywood: Joe, you described the type of romantic comedy you didn't want to be in yet audiences go to those. Is it because they respond to that artificiality or they just aren't given anything better?

Joe: I don't know. You want to go see a movie, you go to what's there I guess.

Zooey: I think that audiences are smart. I really truly believe that people are smarter than they are given credit for. I think that when you make something that is entertaining and smart, people find it and appreciate it.

Joe: And I think 500 Days of Summer does give you the feeling that you're craving when you go to see a love story. In fact it gives you it stronger because it feels true.

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