Hypable sat down with writer John Green and actress Halston Sage to talk about bringing Paper Towns from book to screen!

Paper Towns tells the story of Quentin “Q” Jacobsen and his journey to find Margo Roth Spiegelman. Along for the ride are his friends Radar, Ben, Lacey, and Angela, who find discover love, enhance empathy, and learn about themselves and each other in the confines of a minivan. It’s a story of finding yourself while chasing the figment of someone you believed to be real all along.

This film is the second to be adapted from a John Green novel, after his first, The Fault in Our Stars raked in over $300 million worldwide.

Green and Sage sat down with Hypable to talk about their favorite moments, what they are looking forward to fans seeing the most, and what happened to Walt Whitman.

Green and Sage having fun on the set of Paper Towns

Halston, what is a major takeaway you had after playing Lacey in the film?

Sage: I am a lot like Lacey and I struggle with a lot of the same issues as her. How she wants to be perceived, and wants to be seen, and understood. And I think what I took away from the movie was just understanding that other people feel that way. And understanding that even a grown man [gestures to Green] understands that I can be feeling that way and to know that it wasn’t made up in my head or just an insecurity that I had. It was really comforting to me.

John, you watched the characters you created come to life. What did you learn about your own characters?

Green: When I was writing the book I saw the world through Q’s eyes and that’s it. It is written from Q’s perspective and so I learned a lot about the other characters. Watching Halston be inside of Lacey’s head, or watching Justice [Smith] be inside of Radar’s head, showed me a lot more about what it was like to be Radar and what it was like to be Lacey, in ways that I hadn’t necessarily imagined as completely as they were.

That’s the most interesting thing about the process for me. Seeing how people coming together in a huge collaboration can make something that’s much larger than anything that I could make. Or anyone could make alone.

Speaking of watching things come to life, what was like it like walking onto the sets for the first time.

Green: It was weird.

Sage: It was really weird.

You have so many distinct settings as well. The mini mall, the van…

Green: Oh, the van. The first time I saw the van, I thought, ‘That is it. That’s what I pictured.’

Halston: That’s her.

Green: That’s the old lady. And the mini mall was the craziest. It felt very creepy and very intense. And…

Sage: Dusty.

Green: God, it was dusty. I don’t know what they did, but they managed to make a place that they had built just days before feel miserably dirty.

Sage: Which is impressive.

The trailer lays a lot of the groundwork for the movie, hinting at the clues in the scavenger hunt, etc. Are there other parts of the movie you can’t wait for people to see?

Green: There’s a lot. I’m really looking forward to people seeing Ben, Q, and Radar together. They are very funny together.

I’m looking forward to seeing the bathtub scene with Lacey and Q, and then everything in the minivan. Any time any characters are in the minivan, everyone’s happy.

Sage:It’s always great.

Green: Whether it is Nat and Cara, or you guys [the actors, not Hypable staff], it’s always great.

Way back when, you wrote a screenplay for Paper Towns, John. Is there any scene from your adaptation you wish you could see in the movie?

Green: No. Absolutely not. Fans would have hated what I wrote. Like, deeply hated it. For one thing, Q, in that version, ends up with Lacey. Which would have been fun for Halston!

No. No. People would not have liked my version of the movie. First off, it wasn’t good. Secondly, it diverged so much from the book. People would have been like, ‘What is this? All you kept were the characters’ names.’

Speaking of diverging from the book, what do you hope fans of the book focus on, instead of harping on the changes?

Green: Of course, I hope people don’t harp on [the differences]. My primary concern this whole process was, can they stay faithful to the themes of the book? Can they stay faithful to this idea that the central human responsibility is to try to find ways to understand that other people are just as complex as you are and that their joy is just as real as your joy and their grief is as real as your grief?

And I think they did that and that’s all I care about. They could have cast Margo (Cara Delevingne) as a Shrek and I’d be fine with it.

Continuing on why changes were made…

And look, I think the reason we cut SeaWorld from the movie is pretty obvious. My relationship with SeaWorld changed. It’s different to set something somewhere than it is to pay a company and give them good promotion. And then I think the other things are pretty small and they get dealt with. There is a little less Walt Whitman, inevitably.

Oh no, really? That’s sad!

Green: There’s like 200 pages of Walt Whitman in Paper Towns! They’re not going to have an hour and half of Q reading Walt Whitman.

Sage: It’s on the DVD.

Green: Just Nat reading aloud all of “A Song of Myself.”

Sage: Instead of the director’s note or commentary, it’s just Walt Whitman.

Finally, what was the most memorable day or night on set?

Green: There was a night, Halston spoke of, it was extremely cold, and the whole cast was together. It was so freakin’ cold, and we had to stay up all night and it was weird and hard to stay up all night when you been working very long days. And it was a very special night.

It was a moment where everyone was connecting in the movie and the boys were having to talk about the end of high school and everyone was coupling off…

Sage: I can cry just thinking about it, seeing it in my head.

Green: I have very vivid memories of that night. Being in the warming van with you guys, when you would include me.

Sage: When there was an empty seat.

Green: Just looking out the window at all of the cold people and thinking, ‘Well, your life sucks. I’m here in the warming van. It’s four o’clock in the morning, I’ve had 200 cups of coffee today, I’m in a great mood.’

I just felt so connected to you guys that night and so grateful. It was an important scene in the movie.

Paper Towns hits theaters on July 24, 2015. Watch the trailer below!