A Novice Filmmaker Gets His Shot at the Big Time

So there he was, 31-year-old Pete Jones of Chicago, director of the moment, walking up the line of paparazzi who were shouting his name as he posed for photographs alongside two of Hollywood’s bigger movie stars, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck--and in the kind of surreal way that characterizes Jones’ life these days, that seemed appropriate.

It was Damon and Affleck, after all, who had helped pluck Jones from obscurity by staging a nationwide scriptwriting contest with the winner given a budget of $1 million from Miramax Films to turn that screenplay into a feature-length film--the studio received more than 10,000 scripts. . The film Jones made, “Stolen Summer,” is currently being chronicled in a revealing 12-part HBO documentary called “Project Greenlight” that’s filled with tales of chaos on the set and plenty of angry exchanges involving Jones, the producers, Miramax executives, the crew--in other words, just about everybody associated with the project.

Now Jones was nearing the end of his curious odyssey, shadowed, of course, by a documentary film crew which accompanied him here to the Sundance Film Festival, where his family drama “Stolen Summer” was to celebrate its world premiere last weekend. In a few minutes, a film festival audience snaking into the Prospector Square theater venue from the freezing cold would get the chance to judge for themselves if Jones had been proven worthy, certainly by those who like to sniff that they could have written a better script.

Not unlike Professor Henry Higgins in “Pygmalion,” Damon and Affleck helped create him, and now reporters were asking if Jones would come out of this contest a celebrity or had they, perhaps, created a monster? Damon broke into a wide smile and motioned to Jones, who had just arrived to face the paparazzi. “He wants to know if you’re going to come out of this a celebrity or have we created a monster?” Damon said, breaking into a laugh as the Project Greenlight crew filmed the exchange.

“You know,” said Jones with a stunned expression, “that’s a tough question to start out with! Can I go back?” Then, waxing earnest, he replied: ‘No, I wouldn’t think that would be the case. I hope it’s a good movie. It’s not about celebrity. It’s about doing what you want to do and doing it well and, hopefully, people respond to it. Does that sound really cliche-ish?”

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There’s something refreshingly likable about this husky, red-haired filmmaker whose appearance (no, he did not don a Spielberg-like baseball cap for the event) screams Irish Midwestern Catholic and whose humor reeks with self-deprecating wit. He admits that if it hadn’t been for “Project Greenlight,” he would probably have done what so many other would-be filmmakers do, “try to figure out if I could try to steal a few grand here and there from friends and family and try to make the movie myself in Chicago.”

So, might he have made it to Sundance anyway? Jones delivers a boyish grin. “You know, I highly doubt I would have made it if I had to do it myself. It helps to have the people that I had around me, who were able to help with the script all the way through to the editing.”

The documentary series--now in its midway point on HBO--shows what a bumpy ride it’s been for Jones since he started shooting his movie. Jones says he’s still getting used to being a quasi-public figure. “It’s weird,” he says. “People come up to me on the street and say, ‘Hey, you’re the HBO dude!’ or ‘You’re that “Greenlight” guy!’ or ‘Dude, you’re an idiot!’ But whatever it is, that’s a strange thing having people that you don’t know say something to you. You think maybe that would be something that would be great, but that is not what it was about.”

Jones said he already is writing another screenplay, which is far from finished. “I think Matt and Ben gave me my foot in the door, my opportunity,” he says. “Now, hopefully, my writing and directing abilities will be able to carry me further.... It took me awhile to learn the lesson, but I can’t write the car chase, chase the girls, those type of movies. I never could get the girls, that’s why I can’t write it. I can only write those things that are from the heart or about people I know. So, the next script is most definitely going to be something from me, it’s going to be semiautobiographical.”

The Project Greenlight film “Stolen Summer” has received such good buzz here at Sundance that the producers added an extra screening to the list. The film stars Aidan Quinn as a Chicago firefighter, who has a loving wife, played by Bonnie Hunt, and a big brood. Their 8-year-old son, Pete, played with endearing personality by Adi Lerner, becomes worried because his teacher, a stern Catholic nun, warns him to clean up his rambunctious act or risk the wrath of God.

So, the boy goes on a divine mission to prove his worthiness to get into heaven by devising a plan to convert nonbelievers to Christianity. Along the way, he befriends Danny (Michael Weinberg), a 7-year-old Jewish boy, whose father (Kevin Pollak) just happens to be the neighborhood rabbi. The movie also features Brian Dennehy as Pete’s parish priest.

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To watch the “Project Greenlight” documentary unfold week after week on HBO is to ask, how in the world did this movie ever get made? There were searing battles over financing. Almost immediately Chris Moore, who produced the movie with Damon and Affleck, told Miramax there was no way this movie could be made for $1 million, which raised the ire of Miramax executives, who eventually relented and raised the ante to about $1.9 million.

There were also gut-wrenching moments when Jones wasn’t sure if he could get the cast he wanted. We first see scenes of him drafting letters to Sean Penn and Emma Thompson, then later Quinn agrees to come on board, but not without first throwing around some of his muscle by demanding certain things, like who will be cast in the female lead. On the first day of filming, the crew arrived at a location under the elevated train in Chicago, called the El train, but no one seemed to have factored in that the train comes roaring past every five minutes, making it so noisy that the actors can’t be heard. .

Poor Jones looked at times as if he were a condemned man waiting for the executioner to throw the switch. At other times, producer Moore could be seen screaming at the film’s co-producers, wondering how they had ever managed to get into this mess. Looking back, Jones recalls: “That day (the first day of shooting) was a bad day and it was my fault. You know, the things that you watch from the show, I know the back stories to, so I’m not always thinking it’s exactly the way it was. Unfortunately, the day at the El was exactly the way it was.

“I think there is something to be said that that scene [captured by the documentary] is the only scene that is actually shot in chronological order. If you look at it, it all happened in one day and I think it beautifully encapsulated that day. The other episodes go back and forth. That is why I have trouble, because I know there is stuff missing from those episodes.”

Moore, who is alternately exasperated, angry, supportive and bemused in the series, said, “There are surely people who are sitting on their couches at home watching the documentary and saying, ‘I could do a better job than that idiot! How did this movie get made?’ But I think they are also watching this and are realizing, ‘Gee, it is hard.’ There are a lot of things you can’t control. Maybe you couldn’t have done better than us who do this for a living.”

Moore, who produced “American Pie” and “Good Will Hunting” among other films, expects the experience has changed Jones. “I think Pete learned what it’s like to win a contest that has lots of people shooting at him. Once you get in this business, part of the thing you accept is you are now in the public. When you do something, people are going to comment about it. Pete is learning a lot about filmmaking and being famous.”

If the pressure of making the film wasn’t enough, Jones’ wife gave birth eight weeks ago to their second daughter, Murphy. “The best thing about it is is I would come back home at night and I’d be like, ‘Oh, I got my butt kicked today.’.... I realized, ‘you know what, I’m starting to take myself too seriously.’”

At the same time, just as they were shooting, Jones’ father underwent a triple-bypass heart operation. “[I thought] why am I shooting a movie when my old man who has been everything to me is sitting in a hospital?’ That was tough, but you know what, we got through it and everything worked out great and he’s still with us and my kids still get to enjoy their grandfather.”

At the premiere, Affleck reflected on the risky nature of the project and the effect the documentary has had on Jones.

“What’s really interesting now is to see Pete not only have to deal with this movie, having to be at Sundance, having to have his career launched, but to be the subject of this television series, sort of the star of it, in effect--and not as an actor but as your real life.

“So far, he’s handling it well. Look, I have not ever been on a movie where if there were a ‘[Project] Greenlight’ show, a third of the people would get stoned in the street in public by passersby. Inherent in the process is a little bit of chaos, a lot of ego. It’s kind of like smelting down of things ... so you have this clashing and the sparks that come from it that are what you get the art from a lot of times.

“People I think sometimes go, ‘I can’t believe this is how this business works!’ Relative to other movies, this movie went splendidly. I think Pete did a fine, fine job.”

Outside the theater, as she waited in line to see “Stolen Summer,” Tina Tovey of Sonoma, Calif., said she wasn’t part of Sundance and had just come to Park City to spend the weekend. But when told the story of Jones winning the $1-million contest, she thought there was something about it that reminded her of the old Hollywood, even though she got the facts a little mixed up in the telling.

“The thing that’s exciting is, you know, there’s the story of Betty Grable [it was Lana Turner] sitting at Woolworth’s [it was Schwab’s drugstore] and being discovered,” Tovey said. “You don’t hear those stories anymore, so whenever you see somebody who gets this incredible break against millions of odds, it’s really exciting.”