- The best example of a man who I look up to is
somebody who leads with listening.
Who understands that his power is his sensitivity
is a leading man that I think is worth watching.
(swooshing)
- Jared, tell me the truth.
That's all.
- I think about men.
I don't know why.
I'm so sorry.
(swooshing)
Immediately, like right after the first 15 pages,
I knew I was doing it.
It was like after I read the opening,
I got the chills when he put in the Boy Erased logo.
From that point on, I don't know, I was hooked.
I knew I was gonna do it.
I don't really like the idea of what is a leading man
because I think the best example of a man
who I look up to is a somebody who lead with listening
as oppse to like the idea of leading.
If you have a leading man in a movie,
it's hard to have a guy who leads a story who just listens.
I do think that a lot of what is exciting
about the new leading men that are stepping into
I guess the spotlight right now is
that they're not traditionally like,
they're not necessarily like alpha males.
I guess is exciting the idea
of redefining masculinity in film.
A man who understands that his power is his sensitivity
is a leading man that I think is worth watching.
Andrew Garfield would like fit into that category too.
Somebody who leads with a sense of
how can I enter into this with an open heart.
That is something, that's a man
who I'd be interested in watching in a movie.
One of the reasons why I wanted to do the movie was
because Joel was writing it and directing it.
It was right after he had done loving
that he reached out to me.
I was sort of like on the heels
of having experienced, I think, his brilliance.
That was one of my favorite performances of that year.
I was excited about the prospect of working with him.
He directed me to the book first.
When I read the book,
I fell in love with the character's mind and his thoughts.
Because in the script he speaks so little,
it felt like my way in was through the thinking
and through all the inner-life.
One of the things I was curious about was
how can I, how can I activate something
that is, seems so passive?
So it was a perfect pairing between Joel's script
and a character that seemed perhaps
like he didn't have,
it wasn't sure what was going on with him,
but the book was the key to unlocking
this sort of unknown in the script.
One of the ways in which I try to approach these parts
is with the sense that every characters come to me
to heal something in my life
so that I can leave it feeling more grounded in myself
than when I came in.
It's hard to not approach a project
that is meant to heal from a place of love.
The come-down from these projects is different
for each of them, but I really rely on work
to keep me out of my own neurotic spirals
and that concerns me because I want to be somebody
who can take care of himself outside of working,
but its yet to be proven that I can.
The come-down is like...
I really like start attacking myself a lot
when I'm not doing anything.
I don't know, I function very well within a system,
and film-making is you exist within a system.
Right now I'm enjoying just going from job to job.
(swooshing)
(upbeat music)