On Movies: Learning movie-making at the source

George Nolfi

, the man behind the just-released

Matt Damon

-

Emily Blunt

thriller

The Adjustment Bureau

, graduated from a different kind of film school than most folks in the business. There's no name or campus, and the admissions policy is highly selective. It does help to have written a few screenplays - say, an espionage action franchise, maybe (

The Bourne Ultimatum

), or one of those cool A-list heist pics (

Ocean's Twelve

).

"I had a couple of really big advantages," concedes Nolfi, who has degrees in public policy (Princeton) and political science (UCLA) and who studied philosophy at Oxford, before, back in the 1990s, taking a stab at screenwriting. "One is, I was on the set for almost the entire production of all four of the movies that I have any credit on" - the other two are Timeline and The Sentinel - "and that's pretty unusual for a writer.

"I actually sat just a few feet away from the director, and watched the conversations between the director and the actors and the director of photography for 200-plus days. Essentially, I had not only a film school over the course of those years when those movies were getting made, but also real practical experience. . . .

"The directors I worked with, and the actors I worked with, as well as the crew people - we're talking a couple of hundred people, who really encouraged me to direct and taught me what they knew. Whether that's George Clooney and Brad Pitt and Matt Damon talking to me about what it's like to be an actor, or Steven Soderbergh talking to me about why he's making choices as a director, or it's the gaffer on the set who's talking to me about how the lights are set. . . . I just had an unbelievable opportunity to see it up close and get advice from people who did it every day on a practical level."

And then, when you feel like you're ready to direct your debut, you can hand one of those actors - Damon, say - your script. It didn't hurt that Nolfi's concept had its origins in a short story by the late sci-fi scribe Philip K. Dick, whose fiction has been turned into such bankable endeavors as Blade Runner, Minority Report, and Total Recall.

That said, Nolfi still felt somewhat daunted.

"You'd have to be a fool not to be. I have a very good sense of my own limitations, and how the world can throw stuff at you and mess you up. So that's always there in the back of your head," he says, on the phone from Los Angeles.

How the world can throw stuff at you is kind of the premise of The Adjustment Bureau, which Nolfi developed from a Dick piece called "Adjustment Team."

"It was a brilliant premise, in my opinion," Nolfi says of Dick's yarn. "The notion that fate is a group of people all around us that are making slight changes to make sure that we stay on some grand plan." Instead of fate "as some abstract force, some intellectual idea," in Dick's story destiny is a cadre of guys in suits and ties.

And so Nolfi grafted a romance onto that concept. In The Adjustment Bureau, an up-from-the-streets congressman (Damon) tumbles for a beautiful dancer (Blunt). But his path through life - and politics - seems to be predetermined by a bunch of men wearing Sinatra-era fedoras. For some reason, they do everything they can to thwart the romance. This is a very determined group, and maybe determinism - the belief in a grand system of causality - is part of what Nolfi is playing around with. There are lots of references to free will in the movie (although once or twice it sounds like the characters are saying "free Willy"). And the men in the Bureau - including Anthony Mackie, Terence Stamp, and Mad Men's John Slattery - report to a figure known as the Chairman. Are they G-men working for Big Brother, execs working for some corportate titan, or maybe angels in the employ of, um, God?

Nolfi says he wouldn't call his story religious, although Universal has hosted a bunch of word-of-mouth screenings for church and faith-based groups. "Actually, at the end of the Philip K. Dick story, there is a gray-haired old man - it's a pretty clear God reference. . . . Although he also had a humorous and somewhat cynical take on bureaucracy, I think he was going for something higher-powerish."

But Nolfi wants The Adjustment Bureau to be open to multiple interpretations: "I hope it can be read as a purely science-fiction conceit, as or a metaphor for corporations and government and big institutions that influence our lives. . . .

"And where you're born, what language you speak, all those things that set you on a path. And sure, there's a theological reading. . . . I just want people to leave the theater feeling challenged, where certain issues had come to the fore in the story that maybe they don't think about on a daily basis. Maybe they'll talk about it a little on the ride home."

And if that sounds kind of heavy, that's not Nolfi's intent, either. Where other screen takes on the Dick oeuvre have bordered on the portentous, Nolfi sees The Adjustment Bureau as lighter, and less cynical, perhaps.

"What I was trying to do was tell a story that had a sci-fi tinge to it, but in a different tone than most sci-fi movies. I really didn't set out to do it like they've done Philip K. Dick adaptations, because those have been done many times, and done well. So I was trying to do something different, and hopefully people will enjoy it."

Getting some Oscar "Love." Remember that goofy dude with the big hair who bounded onto the Kodak Theatre stage last Sunday to grab his Oscar for the live-action short "God of Love"? He thanked his mom for doing craft services, and gave shoutouts to his alma mater, NYU, and his home, "the great state of Delaware."

Luke Matheny, who grew up in North Wilmington and attended Concord High School, wrote, directed, and stars in "God of Love," a black-and-white bit of whimsy about a singer who performs in clubs while throwing darts - that's his act. He falls hopelessly in love, with bittersweet results. The 19-minute film, his thesis project at New York University, is part of the Oscar-nominated shorts program on right now at the Ritz at the Bourse; a DVD will be released later in the month, and it's downloadable on iTunes.

So, Matheny accepts his Oscar, and then what?

"Next thing I know I'm backstage with Amy Adams, and I gave her a hug and told her that my girlfriend and I saw Enchanted on Valentine's Day," Matheny recalls, on the phone, still on the West Coast on Wednesday and still trying to make sense of it all. "And that just set into motion this crazy night."

First stop: the Governors Ball, where winners queue up at "a strange bar" to get their golden statuettes engraved. Right behind him: Natalie Portman. ("I didn't talk to her, but her fiance said, 'Congratulations!' ")

"And then we went to the Chateau Marmont, and from there we went to the Vanity Fair Oscar party, which was definitely the most star-filled of all the constellations that night."

Matheny, his girlfriend, Sasha Gordon - who composed the score for the film - and the rest of the "God of Love" team then headed for a diner, where they finished up the night with fries and milkshakes. "Drunk people kept coming up to us, asking if they could hold the Oscar," he says. "It was sitting right on the table."

Matheny and Gordon live in Brooklyn, but the couple plans to move to L.A. soon. He has a feature screenplay - a comic riff on Don Quixote. He has an agent. And, well, yes, he has Oscar buzz.

"Yeah, I'm directing the next Spider-Man," he jokes.

You never know.