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Gavin Wiesen: I have experienced teenage difficulties

17th June 2011

(Cover) - EN Movies - Gavin Wiesen experienced teenage difficulties when he was a high school student.

The director, who is currently promoting his first movie The Art Of Getting By, explained that he witnessed two ways of dealing with adolescent relationships: cool teens who get romantically involved with their desired partner, and less confidents students who don't know how to express their desires.

The Art Of Getting By is Gavin's first feature film for the big screen and stars Emma Roberts. It looks at the intriguing friendship of a lonely, fatalistic boy and a popular but complicated girl.

"I absolutely remember having experienced it first-hand. It felt to me in high school that 10% of the kids were the cool ones running around jumping into bed with one another and the other 90% were walking around wondering why they were such losers, and they were bored and frustrated and angry. And they discovered themselves in college," he told movie website Shockya.com. "So one of the things that I thought was interesting about this movie was that in script form it was an examination of all the difficulties for all the kids who aren't confident yet - how they first arrive at that moment where they're like, Oh, I know how to connect with someone I like, I know how to express desire and put myself out there.'"

The filmmaker also talked about working with the late Bruce Paltrow, father of Hollywood actress Gwyneth, on Duets.

He said shadowing the director-and-producer was a great experience because of his friendly nature and the access it gave him to all stages of film production.

"The greatest thing that could possibly have happened was that I ended up working for Bruce Paltrow, because first of all he was such an amazingly genuine human person who was so inclusive and collaborative. I felt like it was an amazing viewpoint of every step of the process, of basically being his right hand man," Gavin explained. (C) Cover Media

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