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"It's Great That My Friends Happen to Be Incredible Actors": Mark Webber Talks About Making "Explicit Ills"

The 28-year-old actor Mark Webber (Broken Flowers, Animal Factory, and the forthcoming Scott Pilgrim movie, which he describes as "Kill Bill meets Say Anything) made his debut as a writer-director last year with Explicit Ills, a semi-autobiographical, multi-character drama, with a cast that includes Rosario Dawson, Paul Dano, and Lou Taylor Pucci, in his hometown of Philadelphia. It showed at the 2008 SXSW Festival, where it won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature, as well as awards for its terrific cinematography by Patrice Lucien Cochet. The movie has just started popping up in theaters, and Nerve/Screengrab contributor Bryan Whitefield's recent discussion with Webber, before a live audience at the Apple Store in New York City, is available as a podcast.

Screengrab Q&A: Mark Webber, director of Explicit Ills

At twenty-eight, actor Mark Webber is already a recognizable veteran of the indie film-festival circuit. Using several years of valuable experience Webber took on a different role as the writer, director and producer of his first feature Explicit Ills. The semi-autobiographical film follows four interconnected stories within inner-city Philadelphia and focuses on some very relevant and timely social issues. It's been a big year for Webber. Aside from the release of his debut feature, he has been cast alongside Michael Cera in Edgar Wright's upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and also saw the birth of his first child. He spoke with us about the trials and tribulations of getting a movie from notebook to big screen as well as his muted optimism about America's current political landscape. — Bryan Whitefield

Obviously you've worked on a number of films as an actor and even a few as a producer, but how difficult was it to get your own film done from start to finish?
You know what? It's really hard [laughs]. I mean the turnaround from when I wrote the script to when we got it cast, then got financing, to up and shooting, actually happened in a matter of months. And even with editing and post it all came together within a year — which is really fast. But at the same time it's taken me almost twelve years to make this happen, in a way, because it's taken me working as an actor and meeting directors and learning from them as well as throughout that process establishing relationships with other talented, creative people. And because of that I was able to call Paul [Dano] and Rosario [Dawson] and [Jim] Jarmusch directly and get them to read my script, which for a lot of people starting out is the uphill battle that takes up a lot of your time and energy. So I was very fortunate in that way. Then the actual making of the film was just a series of constant highs and lows. We were working with a really small budget and not a lot of time and some really ambitious set-ups shooting-wise. Not to mention we were shooting on film and working with young kids in some not-so-great neighborhoods. But fortunately for me, the majority of the films that I've worked on have been shot in a similar way, so I was able to lean on some of that experience as a filmmaker myself.