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HBO: Billy is a remarkable teenager. Where did you
find him?
Jennifer Venditti: I'm a casting director, and I was casting a film
on location in Maine. There were some small
parts that I thought I would love to give to a
non-professional to be an extra or a featured
extra. So, every day I sat in the lunchroom of
the high school where we were shooting. I
hadn't been in a high school for like 15 years,
and I was introduced to Billy one day, and as
soon as he opened his mouth I was filled with
curiosity, I was filled with inspiration, I was
filled with ... respect and admiration.
High school is where we learn as kids to adapt
and often go against who you truly are in
order to get your needs met. It's a survival
technique. And Billy was someone who didn't
know how to do that, and didn't feel he
should do that. But at the same time I was so
perplexed by him. There were moments where
I thought, my God, he's brilliant, and then
there were moments of, okay, is he strange? Is
he dangerous? I felt all these different things.
The other kids at the school were like, why
are you talking to him, saying, he's a jerk,
he's a weirdo, he's a freak, he's dangerous. I
think when we meet someone different we're
conditioned by the way our society works-
and one of the ways we learn about someone
is through other people. I asked about Billy
and people used words that made me even
more confused.
I didn't want to label Billy because I saw the
universal story, and the humanity in him that
I think is in all of us. And the point of this
story is to see that no matter who we are as
humans, we are all trying to have the same
experience in terms of wanting to find love,
wanting to be accepted, to be heard and
understood, but we all do it in different ways.
This film shows that just because someone
does it different than you, doesn't make them
bad or wrong, it's just we all have our own
paths of getting to the same place.
HBO: It's such an intimate portrait. How did you get
Billy to let you into his world?
Jennifer Venditti: Well, it's interesting. What I've learned is the
most important thing in your project is
intention. People can sense if your intention
is genuine and clear and sincere and comes
from a good place, and people can sense if it
doesn't. I feel like my intention was really
clear, which was to give Billy a voice. I felt
like he deserved to be heard, and that he had
a voice and could speak for many other kids
that weren't being heard. To me this story
speaks to all humanity.
Billy's imaginative world is his sanctuary even
though he knows that none of the people in it
- like King Kong - are real. But still he wants
to be a superhero; he wants to rescue a
damsel in distress. He doesn't think the same
way we do and he doesn't understand and see
things the same way. And he's gleaned so
much information from movies and books
about social situations that these people have
been his resource. He imagines, what would
Cary Grant do in this situation? Because he
doesn't know how to do it the way we do it,
but he knows that in order to survive in this
world he's got to know how to do it, so if he's
going to learn from anyone he wants to learn
from these people. And because of this, the
rest of the world doesn't always understand
and him, he goes to that other place and says
I'll go hang out here for a little bit.
HBO: And at the same time he's very quixotic.
Jennifer Venditti: He is like a young Don Quixote. There's a lot
in the film about perception, and I think all of
us perceive things in a certain way, and we
only see what we wanna see, or what we can
see at the moment that we're in. And I think
the thing with Billy is he just does things in
an extreme way. Billy really sees the good in
everyone. He's a glass-half-full kind of guy,
unless you're performing some kind of
injustice. He can't stand people that break the
rules, or doing something to hurt someone.
But otherwise he's gonna give someone the
benefit of the doubt. I think he really just
wants to be a good person and he cares so
much.
I say sometimes I feel like the qualities that
Billy possesses are these innate qualities that
all of us come into the world with. And then
we learn over time how to build up defenses
and get callous to those things because you
need to survive in this world.
HBO: It's like he knows that the world can be an
awful place, but he doesn't want to go over to
the "dark side."
Jennifer Venditti: Yeah. And that's the mystery factor of this
movie. That's the tension that's always
underlying in this movie that's sometimes
uncomfortable. It's like...will he just stay like
this, or will it finally get to him one day and
he'll break, or he'll go to the other side
because how long can this be sustained in a
world that's not tolerant or accepting of the
way he sees the world, or the way that he
exists in it?
For me, Billy is about a bigger story. It's a
story about finding tolerance and acceptance
and beauty in this world. And sometimes it
doesn't look nice, and sometimes it makes
you really uncomfortable. But there are gems
within it. And that's what life is. It's opening
up to places and experiences that don't make
us so comfortable and aren't as obvious in the
pre-packaged ways that we get things
delivered to us in certain mediums. There is
magic around us all the time. And I hope that
people can see that in this film. It's about the
dark and the light in all of us, and accepting
that and understanding that that is what
makes us who we are.
HBO: What do you hope people will take away from
the film?
Jennifer Venditti: I wanted to give everyone else the gift that I
experienced, having the opportunity to reflect
on my own life through Billy's eyes. I always
say that my intention was to give Billy a voice
- and he gave me one. And when I say I hope
Billy's story "inspires people," I don't mean
that in terms of to inspire them to like be a
better person, but inspire them to look at the
world differently; to experience life in a new
way; to look at themselves and to hopefully
expand our tolerance and acceptance and see
the beauty and the less obvious in life.
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