John Green, Executive Producer
John is on set as often as he was during The Fault in Our Stars, but there’s one big difference: He’s now officially an “executive producer.”
One of my first questions to him is about this new title. “I’m executive producing the hell out of this movie,” he says to laughs from our small group. Though sarcastic, he shows the title’s purpose only a second later. “I’m going to go ask why we keep doing this,” he says of a small scene they’re filming with Nat again and again. “The previous one was great.”
During several interviews with Hypable throughout the day, John will notice something on one of the camera monitors as we’re speaking to him and pause mid-thought. “I have to go briefly executive produce something,” he tells us with a smile. After huddling with director Jake Schreier and producer Isaac Klausner for a moment, he returns to our group with a look of achievement. “Okay! I was in the middle of answering your question…”
After the third or fourth time I watch him take this quick “executive producing” break, I ask him what he’s doing each time he runs off.
“Nothing. Nothing,” he says in a moment of self-deprecation. “I’m listening. I’m just trying to figure out what shot’s going to work. My concern is like.. it’s a discussion with Jake, Isaac, and Nat if [the characters are] going to be sitting instead of walking. What should they be reading, what page they should be on, that kind of thing. I did that stuff on The Fault in Our Stars too, it doesn’t feel that different. Except [now] I’m here all the time.”
He thinks about it for another moment, then adds, “I make a joke when I say, ‘I’m gonna go executive produce something.'”
“It’s funny,” I tell him. It really is amusing.
“Good! I’m glad it’s funny. Because I’m clearly not a real producer. I don’t know a thing about actual movies.”
“He’s being a little modest,” says Isaac.
“I’m gonna go executive produce. I’m gonna go fuss with Radar’s hair,” John tells us a few minutes later.
In a separate interview later, John elaborates on his role in more detail and proves that Isaac is right about the modesty. “I do feel like I’m here partly to advocate for the book and partly to advocate for the fans of the book,” he says. “The main goal has to be to make a good movie. I’m much more interested in making a good movie than in making a ‘faithful adaptation,’ because movie adaptations are inherently unfaithful. I think the reason most readers of The Fault in Our Stars responded positively to the movie was not that we were so faithful to the plot but that we were so faithful to the themes and feelings of the book. And that’s what matters to me, and I think they’re doing a good job of that [on Paper Towns].”
One Day, One School, Two Worlds
Exclusive: Justice Smith (Radar), Nat Wolff (Q), Director Jake Schreier, and Austin Abrams (Ben) at Central Cabarrus High School
It’s mid-morning and the scenes being shot today are relatively insignificant. Executive Producer John Green fills us in on the day’s schedule: “We shot Ben, Q, and Radar having a conversation about where Margo might be, sort of at the beginning of their search for her after her disappearance,” he explains. “And then we shot a scene where Margo and Q and Ben are at school and they’re together deciding to skip school so they can go to this weird abandoned mini-mall where Margo seems to be leading them toward. And we also shot a scene with Q and his mom where she drops him off at school. And now we’re shooting a scene where Q is walking down a hall.
“It’s incredibly exciting. It’s… wow. Such hall walking. That Nat Wolff, he’s a brilliant actor, especially when it comes to walking down hallways,” he says.
After shooting scenes outside of the school with Q, his mother, Ben, and Radar, the production takes a break for lunch in the school gymnasium. John’s only there for a few minutes before a line starts to form around him. These people are the day’s extras who are looking to take selfies and get autographs from the author and YouTuber. John is more than happy to oblige and spends at least a third of his short break interacting with the fans. He spends the rest of his time eating with Jake and Isaac.
Remember: Classes are still happening at the high school even though a big Hollywood film is shooting just down the hall and taking up a large amount of the school’s space, including their gymnasium. Exterior scenes are shot in the morning so that the crew doesn’t take up much space indoors while classes are in session. After school ends for the day (around 2 p.m.), they move inside. At one point the on-set publicist tells me that despite co-existing with the students and faculty, they’re perfectly on schedule. “In my world, completely unprecedented,” he says of this co-existence. “To be shooting at a school with 1,400 students? Highly unusual.”
Later, John tells us what he thinks about this experience. “Weird. Super weird because there’s a lot of teenagers here. Many of whom like the book or are excited about the movie, which is fun. I will say, the school and everybody involved in the school have been incredibly generous and respectful. They have to give up large swarths of their already full school in order to let us do this, and I really appreciate that. It’s weird for me to be back in an American high school because I find these places sort of terrifying.”
During our first interview with John in the morning, we notice one girl sticking her phone through classroom window blinds and snapping pictures of the author’s back from only a few feet away. She pulls the phone out of the shades as soon as he turns in her direction, only to resume a couple of minutes later once she thinks the coast is clear.
North Carolinians who aren’t enrolled at the high school try to stop by the set too. John tells us there are more fans here than there were on the set of Fault in Pittsburgh, “which is great, they’re very supportive,” he says before noting that the majority of them arrive after their own schooling ends in the afternoon. “They’re very respectful, they’re quiet while [the crew is] rolling.”
Nat Wolff, Star
Nat joins us in one of the school’s offices during a brief break in filming the hallway scene John told us about earlier (“such hallway walking”). The star speaks to us in mellow tones for two reasons: It’s part of his personality, and he’s tired from being so busy.
“I’m a little bit exhausted because I’ve never done anything where I’m in every single scene,” he tells us, “but it’s an amazing group and I love working with John, and Jake is really doing an amazingly great job. And it’s a great group of kids that I like to hang out with which is why I’m doubly exhausted.”
For example, he and his co-stars went to the basketball games at the high school they’ve been filming at the previous night. “We saw the girls game which was unbelievable. The girls were really great. They lost by one point, it was down to the wire and they shot at the buzzer and it didn’t go in. It was an amazing last couple of minutes.”
“They blew it,” he deadpans.
Luckily for everyone, Nat tells us his favorite scenes all involve Cara. “I really loved all the scenes with Margo. [Cara’s] really a great actress. And I loved.. it’s funny, you know we do the movies out of order. So it started off kinda with more of the heavy scenes, and now it’s been fun. We’re just starting to do some of the fun goofy scenes with the friends.”
The cast members have become friends — true friends. “We really have become… I mean everyone says this on every movie, and a lot of times it’s fake. Most of time people are pretending. But we really have become best friends on this movie. We all live right next to each other and we spend every single second together. I feel like I’ve known them my entire life, so the scenes are so easy.”
Despite numerous similarities between the Fault and Paper Towns sets, Nat says it wasn’t too strange to come on set without Shailene and Ansel Elgort, as he had already prepared himself. “Strangely enough, I ended up spending more time with John than the two of them, because when we went to go do the press tour, John and I were paired up. So we were ready to make our own movie just starring… we’re going to make our own buddy movie.”
“We had this transition from when we were filming The Fault in Our Stars to when we were doing press for two really intense weeks,” adds John. “And those two really intense weeks were just me and Nat, all the time together, just the two of us. That was when we made the transition.
“We were like, we’re not in The Fault in Our Stars anymore. We’re in the Nat and John movie. And now we’re in the Nat and John movie also starring Radar and Ben,” he says with a big laugh, clearly amused by his own joke.
Though we only had five minutes with Nat, it was clear he and John had truly formed a tight friendship.
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