Hal Hefner, 15, is an average high school sophomore in Plainsboro. He stutters and suffers the daily indignities of a typical teenager. With only a little encouragement, Hal falls in love with the star of the debate team and finds himself suddenly immersed in her ultra competitive world of high school debating, with its players, its politics, and its own set of rules.##M:[more]##
It may seem like an improbable romance, but it seems certain to last at least through this summer. Hefner is a character in the fictional Plainsboro High School portrayed in “Rocket Science,” a new movie being screened at the Sundance Film Festival in Colorado Friday, January 19, to Friday, January 26.
The film, to be released in movie theaters in late summer, is directed by Jeffrey Blitz, who was nominated for an Oscar for his documentary “Spellbound,” a 2003 film about spelling bees. He lost to Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine.”
The Sundance website describes the film as “Jeffrey Blitz’s ingenious story of adolescent love and how finding one’s voice seems constantly to reinvent itself. Strewn with sardonic images, hilarious dialogue, wonderfully idiosyncratic expressions of character, and a narrator at pains to convey the mysterious connections of life, it evokes teenage confusion with humor and honesty. That Hal can’t tell if he’s motivated by love or revenge is just one amusing irony (kids making out during a debate on abstinence is another).”
Blitz does have New Jersey roots — but none in Plainsboro. “It was chosen largely because I liked the name for my story and wanted, actually, to use a place I had never been to — I thought it would free me up to shape the story however I felt it needed to be shaped,” he says. “I have since been to Plainsboro (had some great pizza there, by the way) and hope I did it justice.” (Blitz describes the pizza, from Aljon’s, as “excellent and with plenty of garlic!”
Blitz, raised in New York City’s lower east side during his early years, graduated from high school in Ridgewood. He lives in Los Angeles but is in New Jersey several times a year to visit his parents. He studied creative writing at Johns Hopkins. Blitz, like the leading role, has stuttered since he was young.
When talking about film and Plainsboro in one sentence, one must ask about a potential six degrees of Bryan Singer, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School, Class of 1984 and director of “Superman Returns,” “The Usual Suspects,” and “Apt Pupil.” “I don’t know Bryan though I did meet him once,” says Blitz. “As an alum of USC, he hosted a screening that included my thesis film — but no connection beyond that.”
Casting call notices that appeared in early 2005 sought a “teenage boy 13 to 18 who stutters, to play the lead Hal Heffner.” The casting director, Matthew Lessall, was searching all over the country to find a teen who stutters and also acts. The film stars Reece Thompson, who was born in Canada in 1988. Featured actors include Anna Kendrick, Vincent Piazza, Nicholas D’Agosto, and Aaron Yoo.
There are scenes in Plainsboro, Trenton, and Asbury Park. “We shot in Maryland, New Jersey, and Los Angeles, finding good approximations of the real thing whenever we couldn’t just shoot the real thing itself,” Blitz says.
