A learning experience

DIRECTOR Ryan Fleck can’t pinpoint the inspiration for his first feature film, “Half Nelson,” which he co-wrote and produced with his girlfriend, Anna Boden. The drama, which opens Friday, revolves around an idealistic young teacher at an inner-city junior high school whose personal life is spiraling downward.

Fleck thinks the genesis may have had something to do with protests he attended before the commencement of the U.S. bombing of Iraq in 2003.

“We were going to a lot of these protests, and it was kind of exciting because we felt like we were going to have some kind of impact,” Fleck said. “But we didn’t. I think that frustration of feeling like you can’t make a difference ... is what’s driving this character through self-destruction.”

No one was banging on Fleck and Boden’s door to read their script, so they shot a 19-minute version, “Gowanus, Brooklyn,” which won the short film prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.

The feature’s focus is on the teacher, Dan (Ryan Gosling), and his unlikely friendship with a bright student named Drey (Shareeka Epps) after she discovers him smoking a crack pipe in the school’s restroom. The short revolved around Drey.

Epps, now 17, was all of 13 when she was cast in “Gowanus, Brooklyn.” Fleck and Boden had gone to Brooklyn middle schools, asking drama teachers if they had any students worth considering for the part.

“I was pulled out of my dance class by a drama teacher,” said Epps, who enters her senior year in high school next month. “They wanted some nonexperienced kids to audition for it.”

Even after making a big splash at Sundance, Fleck and Boden had a hard time interesting independent film financiers. “I would have thought it would have been an instant entry into the feature world,” said Fleck. “But it was still a struggle.”

The reason, he believes, is that, on paper, “Half Nelson” is extremely dark. “It’s hard to translate what’s on the page. The nature of the story is pretty heavy, even though we wanted to handle it with a light touch.”

Eventually the money was raised. “Half Nelson” was shot in 20 days with a budget of less than $1 million.

Before production began, Fleck and Boden contacted Epps about reprising her role as Drey. They were worried that she would be too old for the part.

“We hadn’t seen her in a few years, but we met with her when we were starting to cast the movie,” Fleck said. “She hadn’t grown at all. Definitely, working with Shareeka on the short taught us a lot about the character.”

GOSLING, 25, wasn’t on their initial casting list because the character of the teacher was envisioned as being in his 30s, Fleck said. He’s still fuzzy on how the connection was made. “Our casting director somehow talked to his manager, and before I knew what was happening, I was meeting with him,” he said.

Though nothing in the script changed with Gosling’s hiring, the actor “had lots of ideas,” which Fleck said he welcomed. “We love to collaborate with actors. I have a lot of respect for what they do. And going with someone in their mid-20s was a great dynamic because he’s much closer to the kids’ age. I think it lends itself to these themes of youthful idealism.”

A former member of the “Mickey Mouse Club,” Gosling is considered one of young Hollywood’s most versatile talents, bursting into the scene in 2001 as a neo-Nazi teenager in “The Believer” and then making female hearts flutter in the 2004 romantic drama “The Notebook.”

“Half Nelson,” says Gosling, was exactly the project he had been looking for. It’s about “real people,” he said. “People we have all met. People like us. The fact I would be working with a lot of people who weren’t actors and teaching in a class with kids -- those are the kind of things I find interesting. And working for a really small budget gives you a lot of freedom.”

A month before filming started, Gosling rented an apartment in Brooklyn just a block away from the school where the film was shot. “It was nice to walk to work in the morning and be in this environment,” he said.

He also spent time following a junior high school teacher, David Easton, who, like his character, invigorates and challenges his students.

“He let me sit in on his class,” Gosling said. “He was like their friend and was always going off the book and trying to keep them interested and engaged. The day I came to visit, he had gotten a soft-shell crab and brought it into class and taught the kids that everybody has to have a shell to protect it. He was trying to relate that to the defense that they had built for themselves as sort of a shell. He was just an all-around great guy.”

And a pretty good actor to boot, as Easton was cast as Dan’s older brother in the film.

Gosling immediately bonded with Epps.

“Everybody loved her,” said Gosling, who remains close with the young actress. “It was real amazing to watch her on set, actually. She just makes you feel good. You started to notice that, during filming, people were trying to get 15 minutes in with Shareeka. She would pick them up for the day. She was like crew morale.”

Gosling was equally exuberant about working with Fleck. “We never had to hit a mark or say a line the same way twice,” the actor said. “We were always free to explore the impulses we were having in the scene. It’s as free as I’ve ever been. I think it’s hard to fail in that kind of environment, no matter who you are.”