Until the dark day of I Can Has Cheezburger: The Movie!, Safety Not Guaranteed will standâas far as I can tellâas the only motion picture inspired by an internet meme. While its origins make Safety Not Guaranteed sound slight and disposableâa few steps above Battleship in Hollywoodâs âOh shit, what else can we turn into a movie?!â descentâthe difference is that Safety Not Guaranteed is both staunchly independent and very, very good. Funny and sad and sweet and clever, itâs a film that transcends its roots to becomeâand I know weâre only halfway through 2012, but fuck itâone of the best films of the year.
âItâs about emotional time travel,â director Colin Trevorrow tells me, adding that the theme of the film, despite it being both a comedy and a romance, is pretty somber: âYou canât go back.â
That sentiment also contradicts the classified ad-turned-meme behind the film. Published in 1997 in Oregonâs Backwoods Home magazine (your source for âpractical ideas for self-reliant livingâ), the ad reads: âWANTED: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. Youâll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.â By the time the ad hit ytmnd.com, it was accompanied with audio from Paul Engemannâs âPush It to the Limitâ and a photo of an intense man with an even more intense mullet.
Rather than smirking along with the rest of the internet, Trevorrow and his writing partner Derek Connolly saw the germ of a story. Connolly took those six lines and ran with them, and Trevorrow lined up Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass to star (Duplass and his brother, Jay, also serve as producers). But before they started filming, Trevorrow wanted to get permission from the man behind the ad. And at first, John Silveiraâa man whom Trevorrow described in the Wall Street Journal as âa unique animalâa survivalist and a poet, an armed raconteurâââdid not trust me at all,â Trevorrow says. Silveira, an editor at Backwoods Home, had written the classified to fill space; while he was as surprised as anybody by the ascension of what he called âthe time-travel adâ to âminor internet phenomenon,â he didnât want the filmâs protagonist to be portrayedâor, rather, inventedâas he had been online.
Luckily, neither did Trevorrow. In the film, Kenneth, played by Duplass, isnât âsilly and goofy,â Trevorrow saysâheâs awkward, yeah, and possibly insane, but heâs also sincere and likeable. While Darius (Plaza)âan intern for a Seattle magazine whoâs assigned to write about Kennethâlies to get close to him, she soon realizes thereâs more to Kenneth than his bizarre classified or unfortunate mullet.
âAubreyâs role was written very specifically for her,â Trevorrow says, adding that she âinformed what the dynamic would beâ and the screenplayâs âinitial draft didnât really have a love story.â Thatâs hard to imagine, considering how natural and engaging Darius and Kennethâs unlikely romance is in the finished film. Even as Darius deals with the awkwardness of her aging editor Jeff (Jake M. Johnson) and her Asperger-y fellow intern Arnau (Karan Soni), the core of the story remains Darius and Kennethâs deepening, frequently hilarious bond. And throughout, a question: How much should Darius, and the audience, trust Kenneth? Itâs a story thatâs funny, strange, honest, and daringâin other words, not what audiences expect during blockbuster season.
âThere wasnât that studio breathing down our neck,â Trevorrow says about why his Sundance-approved film turned out as well as it did. âYouâre seeing a very honest, earnest tone.â And while he admits the pretty astounding fact that the film was âshot in 24 days, for well under a million dollars,â Trevorrow adds that he hasnât been making a big deal about itâsince Safety Not Guaranteed is playing in the same multiplexes as stuff like The Avengers, heâs wary of people underestimating it or putting it off until it hits Netflix. âWe achieved that trick in making people think itâs a bigger movie than it is,â Trevorrow says. Hereâs hoping enough people see Safety Not Guaranteed to make it a legitimately big movie. It deserves it.