Jason Ritter Interview, Sept. 28, 2008, Part 1

Reelscene : Tell us about your film, and for some people it may not have a good title but the title is, "Good Dick". How did you come about to this project?

Jason Ritter : I've known the writer/director/producer/lead actress Marianna Palker for about nine years now. We met in acting school and she'd been working on a script for a while and she wasn't letting anyone read it and finally she handed it to me first and said I wrote this for the two of us to play the main roles. It was only a sixty page script, it wasn't a completed script by any means but the core of it was really there for me, the main idea. She had initially had thought she was going to scale it down and make a short but she decided after a read through that we had to flesh it out and make a feature and just get it all out in one go.

Reelscene : What appealed to you about the script? It's kind of a serious subject matter.

Jason Ritter : It is a very serious subject matter. That was one of the things that appealed to me about it that it's not something often talked about. It's very uncomfortable for everyone but because it's uncomfortable to talk about, we don't talk about it and then what happens is people who had experiences like that feel ashamed or feel like they shouldn't bring it up.It's a complicated enough thing when you've been attacked in that way. But the fact that it's not... almost like not an acceptable thing in society, it's somehow you feel tainted or something like that when something like that has happened to you. One of the things that appealed to me was it a female character and a male character that you don't often get to see or spend any time with in film. And also this is about her character is dealing the long term repercussions of sexual abuse. A lot of times movies that deal with it, deal with it in an immediate sort of fashion where someone... it happens and someone goes to jail or something like that, but the people who are left behind, who feel like they've just been discarded, used and discarded. And the male character I feel... I love... one of the things that I'm passionate about is trying to make people relook at what aspects of your gender define who are or who you should be. And here's a case of a male character who does all of these things that in the society that we grow up in a man shouldn't do. He shouldn't… he should respect himself in every single moment and I feel like this character is OK with losing battles, his masculinity somehow is not threaten by the horrible demeaning things that she does to him. He always sees the bigger picture. And even though she's this aggressive angry woman and doesn't display that many feminine sort of docile qualities it doesn't make her any less of a woman, it's just a different experience. But because she doesn't have the regular woman experience she feels like why would any man ever love her. There's nothing in magazines or any kind of film today that tells her that she is also worthy of being loved, you have to look a certain way and some Prince Charming will come and swoop you away if you're as good looking and charming as some of the lead actresses we see now a days in your average romantic comedy.

Reelscene : Perhaps they're not perceived as Prince Charming.

Jason Ritter : Yes, exactly, exactly, absolutely. I also like that... I feel like, I feel like love comes in so many different ways and people find each other in different ways. If you see enough movies about a Homecoming King and a Homecoming Queen and you really desire that, for some people then that comes true and that's great but for the rest of us we have to deal with more real things that don't get talked about as much because they're not as palatable. You can't see it on an Afterschool Special about falling in love and having some kind of dream come true. The thing that I liked about this movie is the script was as messy and complicated as I found the life to be once you get past people's initial sort of defense mechanisms.

Reelscene : Well you've brought to the character a very mature and I'll say positive outlook to his approach to the girl, what did you draw upon for that?

Jason Ritter : I drew upon largely, sort of, some of my personal experience in that .... I saw in high school that being a nice guy wasn't really working and guys who were sort of being mean and disrespectful to women were actually having relationships and things like that. And I understood that on like a social level, but you can either choose to play that game or not. And I think it goes back to my 'Star Wars' roots, it's like you can choose to go to the dark side and that might feel initially more powerful. But if you're a Jedi there's not any kind of immediate reward but it is infinitely more powerful because of the kind of energy that you spread into the world, energy for lack of a better word, the kind of outlook that people see and then replicate. If you look at today the most famous people for not doing anything are people who are famous for bad behavior. You never hear about So-and-so went to this charity event or So-and-so went to.....

Reelscene : Save the kitten or something.

Jason Ritter : Right, exactly, exactly. So that's the other thing that I like about this movie is here's an unsung hero. A man who will go into the deep dark forest of a damaged person's psyche and try to help them out of it. And he's a very selfless character and people are like that. There are these kind of angels out there who want to help.

Reelscene : And over the long period of the relationship he does get her to a better place, I'll put it that way.

Jason Ritter : Yes, he brings her to at least make a step toward a healthier ideal or at least toward honesty and acceptance of what happened to her as opposed to constant denials and just exportation of anger and bitterness.