It’s 1994, and Sir Ben  Kingsley is a small-time dealer’s shrink

By Robin Rowe

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 6/25/08 – “I learn my lines four weeks before a film, if I’m given weeks,” says Sir Ben Kingsley who stars as psychiatrist in Sony Pictures Classics’ new film ‘The Wackness’. Kingsley is known for being extremely well-prepared in front of the camera.  “It’s a lot simpler than people would like to think. There seems to be an eagerness to over-complicate the process. I feel quite ashamed sometimes to share how little research I do.”

“I arrive at the set,” says Kingsley. “I’m not going to let the director or any of the other actors down, and I know my lines. I’m word perfect. I know how my character would behave. I do what my character needs to do. I must allow my character to do what my character says he likes to do on the page, and I follow that strictly.”

“With Sir Ben, it wasn’t about authenticity,” says director Jonathan Levine. “He’s not the kind of ‘New York actor’ you might expect in that role. He’s just an amazing actor. He gave this distinctly ballsy performance, a strange concoction. Our idea was to just bring him into this world and have the world react to him.”

“I remember Olivia and I were in a state of perpetual anticipation, this whirlwind of, ‘Sir Ben! Oh my God, what do we expect?’, says Josh Peck who plays the lead role opposite Kingsley in ‘The Wackness.’ ‘He came to me the first day of shooting and gave me a hug and said, ‘This part chose you; you didn’t choose this part.’ And right then, every wall, every piece of trepidation, everything fell away, because he truly made me feel like an equal.’

“I think, to Ben’s credit, he knew we’d be intimidated,” says Levine. “He knew that this was not going to work if Josh and I were scared of him, not to mention the fact that he’s just a sweet man.”

In ‘The Wackness’ it’s the summer of 1994 and the streets of New York are pulsing with rap music. Hip-hop artist Marathon Man and plays a significant role in the film. Josh Peck is a small-time marijuana dealer spends his last summer before college selling dope throughout New York City and trading it with his shrink Ben Kingsley for therapy.

In 1994, times are changing, as a newly inaugurated mayor Rudy Giuliani is looking to clean up New York with initiatives against minor crimes like noisy portable radios, graffiti and public drunkenness. ‘The Wackness’ is edgy dark comedy coming-of-age story with Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby, Famke Janssen, and Mary Kate Olsen.

Peck’s character has a crush on his shrink’s stepdaughter, Olivia Thirlby from ‘Juno’. An innocent first love experience becomes a life lesson. When the doctor has a breakdown, it’s up to the younger man to throw the older one a lifeline. Propelled by a rap music score, ‘The Wackness’ recaptures the mood of 1994, a time of pagers, not cell phones; a time when Tupac and Biggie were alive but Kurt Cobain had just died.

“For me, hip hop was at its best in ‘94: at its most creative and most authentic,” says Levine. “And while the lives of my friends and I were distant from the gangsta life of the rappers, we identified with their spirit, and the authenticity of feeling that they embodied. So we listened. These days, I don’t really listen to much hip hop. I don’t think today’s artists have as much to say; the production’s too slick. In ‘94, it was a movement; in ‘08, it’s pop. Things just aren’t the same as they were then. No music has ever spoken to me like the Class of ‘94.”

‘The Wackness’
Running Time: 95 min.
Release Date: July 3rd, 2008 (limited)
MPAA Rating: R for pervasive drug use, language and some sexuality.
Distributors: Sony Pictures Classics