B.J. Novak is known as the kind of actor and performer who is hilarious but tends to play deeply cynical characters, the perfect example of this being Ryan Howard on The Office, but in Novak’s latest film, Vengeance, we get to not only see Novak shine in the starring role, but he also directed and wrote the film. And it’s a deep look into the digital age and podcasting, our own fascination with that, and how it separates us from each other and the thing we’re immersing ourselves in.
Getting to talk with Novak about the film, one of the questions on my mind was what inspired him to write this story in the first place. The movie follows Ben (Novak) as he heads to Texas for the funeral of a girl he used to hook up with. When he gets there, her brother Ty (Boyd Holbrook) tells Ben that he doesn’t think his sister died from an overdose but, instead, was murdered, and Ben, who is trying to find a podcast angle to take himself from a prolific writer to a famous podcaster, realizes that this is his moment.
The two embark on a journey to find answers about her death, and as Ben continues to feel as if he’s highlighting the “characters” he meets in Texas, he also realizes that he can’t continue to judge these people as pawns for his podcast. So, I asked what inspired Novak, in the first place, with a story like this.
“I wanted to write something about really two different cultures that had to meet up,” he said. “We’re so disconnected in our lives and you text someone LOL and you’re not really laughing. You know, we don’t really know the boundaries. And I think podcasts are kind of in a way, the most extreme paradox because we’re listening deeply to another person’s voice and yet we’re doing it on our own terms. We don’t know the person and the voices we hear become characters, which isn’t quite the same as people. So to me, that was a wonderful metaphor for what this character, um, Ben Manalowitz, my somewhat shallow, New York podcaster needs to go through himself.”
You can see our full interview here:
Vengeance is in theaters now and you won’t want to miss it!
(featured image: Focus Features)
