PAPER HEART press with Charlyne Yi, by Gary Murray

The first thing you notice about Charlyne Yi is what an incredibly small person she is. The young actress and comic comes across more as a studious college student than a lauded performer. She has been making some serious in-roads in the entertainment industry within the last few years. Charlyne had a small role in the Judd Apatow film Knocked Up and has been a part of US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal, and the Vancouver Comedy Festival. She has performed shows at the Steve Allen Theater and the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. And just recently, she was in Dallas promoting her newest venture, the romantic comedy/documentary hybrid called Paper Heart.

Accompanying Charlyne on this sojourn is her Paper Heart co-star Jake Johnson who plays director Nick Jasenovec. Jake has been a successful actor for years, appearing on television in Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Unit, Lie To Me as well as on the big screen in Bunny Whipped and Red Belt.

The film Paper Heart is part documentary film and part romantic comedy feature. Charlyne plays a version of herself, a comic who is asked to do a documentary film about love. Her intent is to interview different people around the nation about what is that elusive thing called love. She has never been in love and doesn't think it will happen for her. Almost immediately after agreeing to be a part of the film, she meets Michael Cera (played by Michael Cera) and they begin their budding relationship all the time with the cameras rolling. Michael is not fond of having his personal life put on the screen and doesn't like having a film crew follow them on dates.

Mixed with the narrative is Charlyne's odyssey of going around the country looking for stories of long term love. Some of the interviews are with couples who have been married for fifty years, some are with bikers who have build their own family around the bar p atrons and some are kids in a park who give a very unique perspective on what constitutes love.

The tales of amour are dramatized using very basic puppets in a dramatic context. The blending of true stories with cut-out characters is just another aspect of the home made charm of Paper Heart.

On how the project started, Charlyne said, “Early on I wanted to make a documentary about love. I was about nineteen. I dropped out of college and started pursuing performing for live audiences at comedy shows. I was hanging out with mostly older people who aren't married. I started thinking about love and how not many people get married. I didn't hang out with people my age and began wondering 'Am I ever going to meet someone.' I was going from work to performing and I was questioning love myself.”

She found that television was no help. “I watched reality shows” she said, “and thought that people my age would make out with four people in a jacuzzi. Is that what I'm supposed to do? I'm like an old man. All I want to do is play board games, take naps and eat. How am I gonna find someone to do that with me? Go up to some stranger and say 'you seem cool, lets go eat.' I had a ridiculous naive panic attack about love. That inspired me to make a documentary about love. Also, people would strangely and constantly open up to me about love These stories were great about how they found each other. The hope was just to get a collection of true love stories and inspire people. I think that every one wants to find love.”

Jake added, “At first, Charlyne just wanted to do a documentary and Nick wanted to do a narrative. Nick wanted there to be an arc. So this is kind of a mixing of the two, that kind of collaboration of the narrative and the documentary. The both got to do what they wanted and combined the two movies.”

I asking Charlyne was was the hardest part of making this film. “Everything was really hard,” she admitted. “From the documentary part of having to talk to people. I suck at just talking in general I had never done any huge acting, especially trying to make it realistic. I've done mostly stage acting and broad comedy.” She also said that being on the road with the crew was yet another difficult aspect of making the movie. “Just being on the road was so rough and having to survive the road and not killing each other.”

Jake added that they were in an eleven pa ssenger van for weeks on-end filming the 300 hours of raw footage. One day they were shooting in the rain and became covered in the elements. :”We drove for 10 hours covered in mud, like eleven wet dogs in the van. After six hours into it, I think I'm going to have a nervous break-down."



Charlyne said that the icebox in the van 'smelled like a dirty aquarium.' Even worst than the van were the accommodations of the road, staying in cheap hotels. Charlyne noted the the beds would smell like sweet and sour sauce. Jake remembered one particular hotel room. The bolts had been ripped off the jamb and the metal latches were bent. “I looked in and on the inside wall there was a blood stain where the hand had come in and somebody was defending themselves with some sharp object. I was doing a CSI thing trying to put the scene back together again.” Then he noticed that there was a pair of dirty ladies undergarments on the floor. He said, “I thought, 'This is too much.'”

It becomes apparent that Charlyne and Jake have become friends over the shoot of Paper Heart. They both laugh at each other's jokes and finish each others thoughts. Watching them interact during the interview is like watching a brother and sister work together.

“I played a fake character, the real director” said Jake on how he got involved in his role of Paper Heart. A problem with the crew is that they would follow the fake director as much as the real one. Jake called it a funny weird line that was blurred. On taking the role, he said, “It seemed like a fun idea. The real Charlyne was questioning what real love was about. It seemed like fun to go around and convince a twenty-two year-old girl. She never said that love wasn't real but I don't know if its for me. It would be a lot of fun to go into peoples homes and watch a couple for fifty years. It's just love.”

And Charlyne at first didn't want to be on camera and just wanted to be in a 'behind the scenes' role. But she soon realized that she need to be a part of the action in order to make the different elements work. All of the drama scenes were improvised but based off a five page outline script idea. Charlyne said, “We knew where the scenes would go. Like the scene at the restaurant, we knew that Michael would walk out and he would come back. We had planned that bit, but we improvised the scene a bunch of times with different endings. We knew the beats of it, we would talk about the beats and have ideas about the dialogue but the words were all fresh.”

Added Jake, “It's the Judd Apatow influence. Saying a line and getting there anyway you can, to physically improvise the scene.” Both found the improvising hard but challenging and both admitted that they wouldn't want to work that much without a script.

Casting director Eileen Kennedy was hired to find the subjects for the documentary portions of Paper Heart. She was two weeks ahead of the production, going and finding couples that both Charlyne and Nick would like. It was more of selecting sights and then finding performers. She found couples who had been married for 50 years. But they also found spontaneous interviews like the bikers, who they just made friends with the night before. Charlyne found common ground with the kids that were all just hanging out at a park. A few were planned to be there and the rest just showed up. She started out by running up to one and going “Tag. You're it.”



It was decided early on that puppet recreations would be used to shoot the documentary portions of Paper Heart. “In the narrative, we were trying to figure out the style in which the people would tell their love stories,” said Charlyne. “In most documentaries it is usually a talking head and a static shot of old photographs. With my ADD its really hard to concentrate on what they are saying especially if what they are saying doesn't apply to what you are seeing on screen. I thought that it is a shame that you don't see someone drowning. Instead you see an old photo of them and what you are hearing (doesn't match). I thought you could either use puppets or dramatize it like an FBI show. We also talked about treating each story differently, and doing different ones but I could only come up with puppets.”

Charlyne actually created all the puppets, sets and props with her father. Made in the family garage, the puppets were rehearsed and blocked like live performers. The cast thought it was a fantastical and magical bit of creative storytelling.

The final scene is a giant puppet story. “Originally the movie had ended at the doorsteps of Michael's house, where Jake's character goes 'Cut'.. But in the test screenings after the picture had gotten picked up, about 85% of the audience hated the ending and thought it was sad.. Which is sad because I thought it was a hopeful ending. But the audience thought it was such a downer. So we had to create something with a higher energy, but we didn't want to compromise the opened ended 'answer' of the relationships. I made up something really ridiculous.”

Then Jake added, “The powers that be said that the movie doesn't end hopeful enough so you three have to give an answer. We talked ideas and do a puppet epic ending. The craziest epic ending you've ever seen. People wanted to have an ending, their answer.” Both feel that the new ending gives an answer to the audience

Since this is a movie about finding love, did Charlyne find any answers about what love is? “Love is what you want it to be.” she said. “Love is neither right or wrong. Sometimes people go that kids are too young and don't know what love is, they don't have hormones and know what sex is. But that doesn't mean it's not true. You could truly love someone and be a kid. One of the older couples who had been married for 50 years, met when they were 14. Could it just be puppy love?” Then she laughed at her own thoughts and said, “Love in a wild beast, caged into a condition.”

Even though she didn't want starring fame, she will be doing both the Jimmy Fallon and Conan O'Brien shows before the movie is released. For those who want to experience her brand of humor, Charlyne Yi brings her stage show to the Lakewood Theater in September.

And on her thoughts on Paper Heart, she said with a bit of whimsy, “Hopefully they are entertained and didn't waste their money. It would give hope to weirdos like me.”



Check out more about PAPER HEART here - www.paperheart-movie.com/