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6 Degrees Entertainment

Matt Aselton   (Writer/Director - 'Gigantic') Matt Aselton (Writer/Director - 'Gigantic')

'Largely Entertaining'

Brian Weathersby (PAUL DANO) is a 28 year-old salesman at a high-end Swedish mattress company. The afterthought child to elderly parents (ED ASNER, JANE ALEXANDER), and the youngest son in a trio of successful brothers, a shady oil man (IAN ROBERTS), a surgeon (ROBERT STANTON), Brian is searching for his place in the world.

Unfulfilled by his work he spends a good portion of his day pursuing his goal of someday adopting a baby from China. He gets swept up in a romance with the lovely but misguided Harriet Lolly (ZOOEY DESCHANEL) when she comes in to his store one day and falls asleep on one of the beds.

To win her over, he must compete with her bear of a father, Al Lolly, (JOHN GOODMAN) an art-collecting loudmouth with a bad back and deep pockets.

'GIGANTIC' is a funny, surreal love story about the anxiety that comes when two people with crazy families collide unexpectedly and fall for each other.

Chatting one-on-one with writer/director Matt Aselton, we posed 16 questions ... of which he only wished to answer five (5) ... and so, here are those five (5) that he chose to answer: Taking it from the top and what was it about this film that, once written, first drew you to want to direct it also? "I wrote the film with Adam Nagata in 2006, and we brought it to Mindy Goldberg. We wanted to do something original and a bit strange."

The title of the movie, 'Gigantic' refers to ... what? "I think it refers to the scale of the decisions you are forced to make, the big city you're living in and how daunting all of that may seem. It's also kind of an innocent sounding word that a kid might use and I think there's an innocence to the movie. I also just like the word."

OK, I have to say (from a personal point of view) that the storyline of the nameless assassin hunting the main character was so left of center. Can you please explain more as to why this so-called assassin was included in the film? "You're not the only one. We wrote that character in as some sort of subconscious portrayal of Brian (Paul Dano's) inner demon. We wanted the film to be a little bit off center and we wanted to keep the story from conforming to a boy meets girl formula. But we also needed something for Brian to rebel against, he's a very soft spoken, almost subjugated individual -- we wanted to show that he had both a shadow side and the strength to confront it."

The opening rap song over the titles was not expected and I also found to be very much out of place/tone with the movie; especially as it progressed. Why choose this track to start things off? "It takes place in NYC with a young man in his late 20's as the main character, we felt like he probably listened to hip hop. That was all."

The films ending was rather abrupt ... intentional, or was there more on the page that could have been filmed had there been more time and money involved in the project? "That was the ending in the script. I think in general we weren't really interested in trying to see what happens in these fictional character's future lives, we just wanted to leave at that and let the story be told without any forecast for what might happen to these people. Again, we were trying to do something a little different."

Interviewed by Russell A. Trunk

www.thegiganticmovie.com

If you watch this movie and wish to converse about it with me, please send any and all questions to me at: exclusivemagazine@flash.net

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