Reacting to ‘Remember Me’: An Interview with Screenwriter Will Fetters **FULL SPOILERS

Any­one that read my review of Remem­ber Me already knows I enjoyed it, and was one of the select few. In fact, I have strong opin­ions of the film, not from the per­spec­tive of how great the act­ing is or whether direc­tor Allen Coul­ter turned in a tour de force bit of film­mak­ing nav­i­ga­tion, but merely at the idea behind the film and its inten­tions. How­ever, it’s inten­tions, it seems, have been largely lost on the crit­i­cal community.

Spoil­ers after the jump!




Remem­ber Me has been painted as a romance story by the major­ity, but is it? I saw it as some­thing entirely dif­fer­ent. As a result, it became a case of read­ing review after review and say­ing to myself those most cliche and pompous of all phrases, “They just don’t get it.” But instead of writ­ing some all-encompassing edi­to­r­ial of how I thought I was right and every­one else was wrong I decided to go to the source. I con­tacted Sum­mit Enter­tain­ment and requested inter­views with first-time screen­writer Will Fet­ters and direc­tor Allen Coul­ter. Coul­ter, as it turns out, is on vaca­tion for a week, but Fet­ters was avail­able for a con­ver­sa­tion and our dis­cus­sion ended up being more than enough when it came to real­iz­ing my inten­tions of the piece.

Fet­ters began work on what is a very per­sonal script for him in 2004, at the age of 22. The story had been boil­ing around in his head for about two years since the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 ter­ror­ist attacks and while try­ing to go to law school, it took a mis­un­der­stand­ing with Delaware law enforce­ment to finally find a start­ing point, a mis­un­der­stand­ing that can be seen in the film in a slightly fic­tion­al­ized form as Tyler (Robert Pat­tin­son) is arrested by Chris Cooper’s char­ac­ter. In fact, Will describes the film as very per­sonal, say­ing the rela­tion­ship between Tyler and Car­o­line (Ruby Jerins) is a very lit­eral one, resem­bling the rela­tion­ship he has with his two younger sis­ters. While this rela­tion­ship, and the rela­tion­ship between Tyler and his fam­ily and his new girl­friend (Emi­lie de Ravin) and her fam­ily are cen­tral to the story, it’s not specif­i­cally about those relationships.

So what is the film about? What were Will’s inten­tions? This was the start­ing point of our inter­view, which took place on Mon­day, March 15, three days after the film was released to largely neg­a­tive reviews (28% on Rot­ten­Toma­toes) before going on to make $8 mil­lion open­ing week­end after being made for $16 million.

Fea­tured below is our lengthy con­ver­sa­tion address­ing what the film is about, the crit­i­cal reac­tion and how Fet­ters is han­dling such neg­a­tiv­ity on what is only his first screenplay.
What is the film about and what were your intentions?

Will Fet­ters (WF): It seems peo­ple didn’t seem to get what the film was about. I think on some level, even get­ting what the film is about, peo­ple aren’t nec­es­sar­ily going to like it. I think pre­con­cep­tions tend to play a role, and what this film was, in a lot of ways, was a study of grief and a study of these “bolts from the blue” that alter the tra­jec­tory of life and for me the script started as a 22-year-old kid’s ther­apy session.

I had some per­sonal tragedy in my life and this broader event occurred and it dove­tailed what I expe­ri­enced as a young man into the same kind of anger and sad­ness that fol­lows, and this story, this script, was a way to kind of work it out.

I think the fairest crit­i­cism that I’ve read is going after the basic story points, which when you write a love story you’re going to tread on sim­i­lar grounds, that kind of stuff I really get. Some of the dia­logue is a lit­tle cute and some of it seems con­trived, I get that, but I think a lot of peo­ple aren’t get­ting what our inten­tions were. Like the idea I wrote this 100-page script and then with five pages left I didn’t know how to end it so I did this with 9/11. It was so far from that. This whole movie is about deal­ing with that trauma, deal­ing with that anger and try­ing to see how peo­ple can be united and divided by it.

I thought it was inter­est­ing how some crit­ics called the end­ing a cheat, but in real­ity isn’t that exactly what that expe­ri­ence is? It’s cheat­ing the audi­ence out of the bond they formed with that char­ac­ter as the result of a tragic and unex­pected accident.

WF: Absolutely, that’s exactly what it is. Ulti­mately, this is the chal­lenge, I think this was kind of the para­dox of doing a film about 9/11; How do you recre­ate an event that came out of nowhere?

I want to look at it kind of like Pre­cious. I think com­ing up through the film fes­ti­val cir­cuit Pre­ciousgot a lot of buzz for being dark, but with Remem­ber Me, I think the fact it was pre­sented to the world as this Dear John, Nick Sparks romance and it ends up being some­thing much dif­fer­ent has hurt it is as far as peo­ple going into it. What we tried to do with the end­ing, and maybe some­day some­body will make a movie about the event bet­ter than we did, prob­a­bly they will, maybe they already have, but as far as recre­at­ing the actual emo­tion of the actual expe­ri­ence and what I tried to do with the writ­ing was try to fore­shadow tonally and emo­tion­ally what the movie is about with­out actu­ally telegraph­ing it literally.

We tried to give enough bread­crumbs, enough cul­pa­bil­ity for the audi­ence to kind of have some sense, but not actu­ally know. Because if they actu­ally know, like in United 93 and World Trade Cen­ter, it’s a very dif­fer­ent movie going expe­ri­ence. So I guess [what you said was] well put, it is a “cheat,” it was sup­posed to be dev­as­tat­ing and with some peo­ple it just made them really angry, which it’s fine to be angry, but I wish they would have kind of respected the inten­tions of every­one a lit­tle more. I don’t think any­one was ever try­ing to exploit anything.

That’s sort of the funny thing. I’ve talked to peo­ple already that said the end­ing was a cheat or it angered them and I told them that’s per­fect and asked them how they felt when 9/11 hap­pened. Peo­ple felt angry and felt cheated out of the thou­sands of lives that were lost. In essence, the movie puts the audi­ence in that sit­u­a­tion to some degree.


So, when Manohla Dar­gis at the “The New York Times” calls it “a shame­lessly exploita­tive end,” as did oth­ers, I fail to see what the exploita­tion is because this movie was always about 9/11, it just wasn’t explicit in telling the audi­ence at the out­set. Sim­i­larly, when peo­ple woke up on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 they didn’t know what the day would bring. The only way I think you can see this as exploita­tion is if you don’t under­stand what the movie is truly about.

WF: I think that’s the key. Peo­ple who aren’t con­nect­ing to what the broader mes­sage of the story is — Allen Coul­ter and I talked about it and we couldn’t help but think of David Chase when try­ing to describe it. At the end­ing of “The Sopra­nos” he kind of famously said “it’s all there” and every­body killed him for his end­ing. Our movie is tied to an actual event so in a lot of ways it’s an unfair par­al­lel, but I think for Allen and me, we spent so much time think­ing about every sin­gle deci­sion we were mak­ing nar­ra­tively to do every­thing we could to fore­shadow it.

In a lot of ways the movie is flawed in some instances, I would never step back and say it isn’t. Every time I watch it there is dia­logue I hear and think we could have done it dif­fer­ently, but as far as han­dling 9/11, we put the World Trade Cen­ter in the first shot. If you look at the shot setup it’s delib­er­ately done. There are three char­ac­ters in that open­ing shot.

As far as the exploita­tion, I think that’s com­pletely unfair because it’s been used in dif­fer­ent art forms — books have been writ­ten, fic­tional sto­ries — and I don’t know what the statute of lim­i­ta­tions on it is. I guess that’s what I’m most con­fused by. I don’t get why we’re exploitive for mak­ing a really small movie that essen­tially deals with the emo­tion of the day, and how that’s dif­fer­ent from a movie like World Trade Cen­ter which, while being true, just recre­ates an event and puts you through it all lit­er­ally again.
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Thanks thinkingofrob