It Could Be Case of First Stop, Utah, ‘Next Stop,’ Hollywood

“It’s weird talking about yourself,” says Brad Anderson, looking like he means it. “I’ve only done two movies--I don’t feel like I’ve earned it yet.”

But as the funny, thoughtful 33-year-old director well knows, “we live in an instant gratification culture. Someone makes a movie for $50,000 and the next thing you know they’re captured by DreamWorks to do ‘Peacemaker II.’ They have to find the next person to ordain.”

If early reaction at the Sundance Film Festival is any reaction, Anderson could be that next person. “Next Stop Wonderland,” the offbeat romantic comedy he co-wrote, edited and directed, debuted Friday night. Sharply observed, with a fine sense of humor, it manages to be empathetic as well as comic, creating people it’s a pleasure to care about and daring not to be afraid of a little romance.

“I didn’t want to make another jaded, cynical movie; I hate the glibness of youth culture, the idea that you can’t be earnest or emotional because it’s not cool, not hip,” Anderson says with feeling. “I’m willing to explore emotional themes and characters, but there’s a difference between sappiness and being bighearted. Romantics are very discriminating people. If something doesn’t touch them, they’re vehemently against it.”

Anderson has shown in Sundance before, two years ago, when his first feature, “The Darien Gap,” got some attention and a small distribution deal. “It was fantastic, phenomenal to get in with a small movie that was like scraped off the bottom of the table, but it was also taxing and frustrating and a big learning experience,” the director remembers with bemusement. “I learned how to schmooze, how to build stamina to keep a perpetual smile on my face. It’s a social conditioning process, a rite of passage to join the group.”

Also set in Boston (Wonderland is a stop on the city’s rail system), Anderson’s latest film introduces us to Erin (Hope Davis of “The Myth of Fingerprints” and “The Daytrippers”) and Alan (Alan Gelfant), two people whose lives intertwine but who never seem to be able to meet. As they both negotiate the rueful pitfalls of being single, “Next Stop” subtly suggests they may be right for each other without insisting it’s a sure thing.

“It’s a tough line to play,” Anderson admits, reclining his Lincolnesque 6-foot-5 frame on a sofa of a local condo. “If it’s inevitable, there’s no suspense. And if the humor is not backed by an understanding of character, it’s a conventional sitcom, just a string of jokes. It’s always about character.”

Though “Next Stop’s” sense of itself as, in Anderson’s words, “showing everything preceding a potential relationship, what you wouldn’t ordinarily see,” has parallels in Claude Lelouch’s 1974 “And Now My Love,” Anderson hadn’t seen the film when he started. He and co-writer Lyn Vaus did feel a kinship with Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Red” and “The Double Life of Veronique” and their concern with fate, destiny and parallel stories but, as Anderson says, “we’re doing a romantic comedy, not a brilliant Polish film.”

The original idea for “Next Stop” came rather from the Grimms’ fairy tale about a competition a king organized to bring a smile to the face of his melancholy daughter. And in fact Hope Davis does have a fairy tale princess look about her, plus what Anderson calls “an incredible translucentness. You can see into her soul.”

Helping make “Next Stop” what the director calls “an eccentric, oddball movie” is that it is “a hodgepodge of my own weird interests and obsessions.” Male protagonist Alan is studying to be a marine biologist because that field fascinates Anderson, and Davis’ Erin is a big fan of classic Brazilian bossa nova music for the same reason.

“Music sets a film’s whole tone and I didn’t want to do one of those annoying little movies that uses the next hipster MTV band as a marketing thing,” Anderson says. In fact it’s the Brazilian word “saudade,” meaning sadness and happiness at the same time, which inspires the movie’s mood and led to its extensive use of classic bossa nova tunes by the likes of Antonio Carlos Jobim, Sergio Mendes and Astrud Gilberto on the soundtrack.

“I knew emotionally going in that I wanted to tap into the funny bittersweetness of that music,” Anderson says. “It’s that yearning, sad, melancholy thing, a sweet thing really, and you don’t see it that much in movies.”

In line with that, Anderson knew he wanted to avoid “the Meg Ryan problem. We didn’t want to get too cutesy-poo, to throw in weird slapstick elements that make the audience think, ‘Isn’t she cute because she falls down?’ It’s annoying.”

Helping to keep that out of the movie, as well as doing an enviable job using improvised scenes that don’t feel indulgent, was Anderson’s skill as an editor. “I haven’t directed enough to feel in total control on the set--maybe an actor is being a prima donna or the teamsters are leaving, you’re often not sure what’s going on,” he explains. “In the editing room, you are in control. When you’re sitting in front of the editing machine, that’s when you find those little magical moments that occur, that’s when you’re telling the story. Just sitting alone in a dark room, it’s like being in a movie theater and making your own movie. That’s my joy.”