Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Jesse Andrews adapted his own novel and had never written a screenplay before; the script landed on the 2012 Black List. Shooting took place in Pittsburgh in the summer of 2014, and Greg’s house is Andrews’ own family home in Point Breeze. The parodies Greg and Earl make were really produced for the film. Pittsburgh filmmakers Edward Bursch and Nathan O. Marsh built them from papier mache, clay, sock puppets and thrift store costumes, materials chosen because a high school student could actually afford them. The targets are famous features, not short films. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon made it soon after losing his father and put a dedication at the end. The framing is deliberate: the bedroom scenes use 10mm wide lenses and leave the negative space open, and as Greg loses control of the story the camera calms and the shots lock off. At Sundance the film won both the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for drama and the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award, and nothing else that year. It still finished just over nine million dollars worldwide. A good fit if you accept that the narrator’s selfishness is never corrected and that the amateur parodies keep breaking the tone. Not for anyone waiting for Rachel’s own inner life to open up; the film stays inside Greg’s view on purpose.