Covering Media

Liberal Arts (2012)

Opened: 09/14/2012 Limited

Trailer: Click for trailer

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Genre: Comedy/Drama

Rated: PG-13 for for sexual content including references, mature thematic material, and some teen drinking.

Synopsis

Bookish and newly single Jesse Fisher (Josh Radnor) is a university admissions counselor in his mid-thirties living in New York City who returns to his Ohio alma mater for a retirement dinner honoring Peter Hoburg (Richard Jenkins), his favorite English professor.

A chance meeting on campus with 19-year-old Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen) -- a precocious undergrad who loves classical music, improv and Twilight -- awakens in Jesse long-dormant feelings of possibility and connection. The pair strikes up a long-distance epistolary romance, prompting Jesse to return to campus for another visit.

Although Zibby appears beyond her years, the age-difference between the budding paramours weights heavily on Jesse, who is torn between moving forward in life, and holding on to the indelible memories of his own university years.

Featuring a rich assortment of peripheral characters, including a mystically upbeat party animal (Zac Efron), a brooding young depressive (John Magaro), and a feisty Romantics professor (Allison Janney), LIBERAL ARTS explores the emotional tug-of-war between youth and adulthood, as played out on a leafy Midwest campus that is both Eden-like and tumultuous -- and entirely unforgettable.

Director's Statement

College and I got along terrifically well -- maybe too well. My transition into the "real world," absent dorms, seminars, and meal plans, was bumpy, to say the least. Four years at Kenyon College flew by; graduation felt less like celebration than banishment.

LIBERAL ARTS is at once love letter to a liberal arts education and recognition of its limits. It posits that books and the academic mindset can be simultaneously liberation and a kind of prison -- that an over-developed mind paired with a disengaged heart can bring one more anxiety than joy.

Everyone in LIBERAL ARTS -- the students, the professors, the 35-year-old alum -- is suffering to some extent, wishing circumstances were different. The journey each character takes in the movie is one of acceptance. For Jesse, that acceptance has to do with his past -- specifically his college years -- and the painful suspicion that his best days are behind him.

It's easy to get tripped up by our past, to romanticize it out of all proportion. The trouble with nostalgia is that it tends to distort and reduce the present moment; it puts us to sleep. While we obsess over the good old days, the good -- and possibly better -- new ones roll on by without our noticing.

Still, the past must be dealt with. If we're to step into our lives in a vital and engaged manner, we must both bless our past and bid farewell to it. LIBERAL ARTS is, for me, both a blessing and a farewell.

About the Production

It was a Romantics literature course at Kenyon College in Ohio -- Josh Radnor's alma mater -- that intensified the writer-director-actor's passion for university life, planting the seed for what would ultimately become LIBERAL ARTS.

Radnor's sophomore feature, following 2010's award-winning HAPPYTHANKYOUMOREPLEASE, is a campus romance set amid a leafy Midwest university not unlike the one Radnor himself attended. Indeed, though unnamed in the film, LIBERAL ARTS was filmed at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, fulfilling a dream on Radnor's part to return to the source of his heady undergraduate days. "For years after college I ached like Jesse to go back to that time," Radnor admits. "I felt intensely fortunate to have gone there. I knew these were special years even as they were happening, and it was great that I didn't have to leave the place before I began appreciating it."

Radnor and his crew, including producer Jesse Hara, were fortunate in that university officials warmly opened doors to the production. The tree-lined walkways, cozy dormitories and elegant brick classrooms that make up Kenyon's picturesque campus become de facto characters in the film. "It's truly one of the most beautiful college campuses in the world," Radnor boasts. "I'm actually shocked we were the first feature film to shoot there. I joked to someone that the first day we shot b-roll it seemed like the buildings were posing for us." Radnor describes Gambier, Ohio as a sleepy college town consisting of little more than a bank, a bookstore, a deli and a grocery store. "The crew was a bit shell-shocked when they arrived," he adds. "But I assured them the town would work its magic on them -- and sure enough it did. It was such a thrill to be able to watch people fall in love with a place that was so important to me."

Radnor began writing LIBERAL ARTS after screening HAPPYTHANKYOUMOREPLEASE on the Kenyon campus two years ago. He was 35 years old at the time -- the same age as his LIBERAL ARTS protagonist Jesse -- and suddenly realized how much older he was than the students on campus who came to watch his feature debut. "Time started to bend in this weird way," Radnor recalls. "It seemed impossible that I was nearly twice the age of my audience there -- especially because my memories of college were still so vivid." He remembers remarking to his producer, Jesse Hara, how inappropriate it would be to fall in love with a college student, prompting Hara to suggest that this premise would make a great movie. Radnor began developing his hook, avoiding the usual campus cliches. "Most college movies tend to be about fraternities and partying," Radnor says. "I wanted to make one that felt closer to the experience I had: the books, the professors, the watershed moments of encountering new thoughts and new ideas."

At the heart of LIBERAL ARTS is the protagonist Jesse, a 35-year-old university admissions counselor in New York City whose life is initially awash in chaos, beginning with the theft of his laundry during the film's opening scene and extending to his emotional entanglements which serve as the beating heart of the film. Only when Jesse leaves the city to attend the retirement party at his alma mater does the film take on its seductive rural veneer. "The juxtaposition between urban New York and rural Ohio was crucial to the film," Radnor explains. "Jesse's New York, especially at the beginning, is a kind of gray cinder-block prison. His drive back to campus is not unlike Dorothy emerging from the house after the twister in THE WIZARD OF OZ -- suddenly everything is in color."

In Jesse's universe, a book is seldom far from his grasp, and reading and learning become nourishment for the soul -- whether one is absorbing gothic romance bestsellers or the deeper stuff of college lit seminars. "I really enjoy talking about books," Radnor admits. "And I had fun writing characters that also like connecting over and arguing about books. Never mind that reading generally feels like something worth celebrating and defending." Book talk abounds in LIBERAL ARTS, whether it's Jesse's discussion of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest with his troubled new friend Dean, or the literary flirtations between reader and bookstore clerk in a New York City scene. Indeed, one of the crucial moments in the film involves Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen) defending her love for cheap vampire romances over establishment literature or elitist attitudes towards reading material -- "You think it's cool to hate things," she chides Jesse. "(But) it's not -- it's boring. Talk about what you love and keep quiet about what you don't."

It's a powerful and timely line of dialogue, one that Radnor admits is among his favorite in LIBERAL ARTS -- for the way that it sheds light on both characters and their literary tastes (not to mention their age difference) and also drives a wedge between them. It elevates the argument to a more profound level, positing one generation against another and revealing an unexpected victor in the neophyte Zibby. "For Jesse, what someone reads is a reflection of who they are at the deepest level," Radnor insists. "While Zibby has no problem reading a book purely for entertainment." Radnor himself admits he had great fun developing this dispute because Jesse is so uncomfortable with their growing intimacy, latching onto a book to justify his own simmering resentment of Zibby. "Zibby's embrace of the book signals to Jesse that America has become this cultural wasteland," Radnor continues. "But I'm with Zibby. I think she wins the argument hands down. I think culturally we're gripped by an epidemic of negativity where everyone is a critic. Our snark level has grown fairly high. I'm of the opinion that it's a lot cooler and more fun to love things and keep quiet about things we're less fond of."

Another source of tension in the story emerges between Jesse and his mentor, the aging literature Professor Hoberg, whose retirement festivities ignite the central story line. As such LIBERAL ARTS becomes as preoccupied with growing old as it does with grasping for youth. Hoberg's transition from working life to begrudging retirement counterbalances so much of the youthful optimism in LIBERAL ARTS, revealing a melancholy character that is mired in anxiety over the so-called golden years. "Professor Hoberg is a bit of a curmudgeon and a cynic," Radnor admits. "As much as he complains about faculty meetings, you get the feeling he dearly loved teaching and his life at the college. When we're young we want to speed things up; when we're older we want to rewind or do things over. This film is about stepping fully into adulthood, no matter what your age. I totally believe what Professor Hoberg says at one point in the film -- 'Nobody feels like an adult. That's the world's dirty secret.'"

Featuring a stellar cast including veteran character actor Richard Jenkins as Professor Hoberg and lauded upstart Elizabeth Olsen (MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE) as the precocious Zibby, LIBERAL ARTS serves up a stellar ensemble orbiting around the central protagonist played by Radnor himself. After Jenkins' cameo appearance in HAPPYTHANKYOUMOREPLEASE, Radnor set about writing the part of Professor Peter Hoberg specifically for him, if only to work with the seasoned pro for more than a few hours on set. "Richard can be tough and intimidating but also deeply vulnerable," Radnor admits. "Peter's at a real crisis point in his life and Richard lets us see all his pain as well as the mask he puts over all that. Richard is an intensely smart, charming guy and a really gifted actor. If he were in all my movies, I'd be a happy director."

Radnor describes 19-year-old sophomore Zibby as a character trapped between worlds -- an old soul in a young person's body who is wise and sophisticated but also young, energetic, even goofy at times -- the opposite of the character Olsen played in her breakout feature MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE. "Many people who see the movie assume I must have written the part of Zibby for Elizabeth," Radnor admits. "Even though I didn't, it's one of those parts that you can't imagine anyone else taking on. It was just a great meeting of actor and role -- I've rarely been so confident in someone's bright future."

Of his supporting cast, Radnor has nothing but similar praise. From Kenyon alumnus Allison Janney as the glib, reprimanding lit Professor Fairfield ("Directing Allison is like playing a Stradivarius -- it all sounds so much better than you ever thought it could," Radnor says) to Zac Efron as the mystical college golden boy Nat ("Zac has a terrific and endearing sincerity, which was essential for Nat. I had this suspicion that Zac would be really funny in the part, and my suspicion proved correct," Radnor adds), LIBERAL ARTS brings together the cream of the crop of several generations of indelible screen talent.