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Josh Peck on The Wackness
By Fred Topel | Image property of Sony Pictures Classics
Josh Peck does not have firsthand experiences with the problems facing Luke Shapiro in The Wackness. He has presumably never sold pot, his family has not gone bankrupt and whether or not he's been to therapy is his own business. Still, making a movie about these subjects is almost experience enough.
Josh Peck Experiences The Wackness
"Things can get really messy and become all too real at times," said Peck. "Acting’s not therapy but it can be therapeutic. So I think things can get a little bit scary. You can become almost too open. You want to go to those emotional places and be in touch with those things that are painful, and yet you want to have control over it. You want to be able to speak through the emotion. You don’t want to get so messy that you’re sobbing and you can’t even speak through it. So there’s an immense amount of control that’s involved I think, and very important. So for me, I think it’s finding sort of these primitive emotions that I think are universal for all of us. No matter what, I find a way for them to relate to what my character’s going through, as difficult as it may be. I’ve auditioned to play soldiers in Iraq which is something that I will never have firsthand experience with, and is something I can never imagine. So for me it’s finding my own personal things that somewhat relate to the headspace that they’re in and hoping that it translates."
The Wackness is set in 1994, where Luke has just graduated high school and is waiting through the summer of Forrest Gump to begin college. Peck was quite younger in 1994. "Power Rangers, Bugle Boy jeans, lights in my shoes, Spice Girl lollipops, Joey Lawrence CDs, flannels, ripped jeans, Hootie and the Blowfish. I was really young during that time but in many ways the great thing about acting is you can reinvestigate parts of your brain that might have otherwise gone dormant. So for me it was trying to think back to what were adults talking about in 1994. I remember everyone was talking about Pulp Fiction. That was sort of the definitive thing. So I really tried to work off of that, and reintroduce a lot of the language that we used in the early ‘90s, which wasn’t really different but instead of like now where we might be, 'That’s tight,' then it was, 'That’s mack crazy, son.' That was what people said so I just had to refamiliarize myself with it."
 The Wackness
Peck was also able to rely on writer/director Jonathan Levine to help him with the details, though he got a head start."I did a lot of preparation with my acting coach beforehand to map out these emotions inside of me, and find out where they were for me as it also affected Luke, my character. So in doing the preparation and really becoming engrossed in this kid, and listening to really hardcore East Coast hip hop the entire time I was doing the movie. I don’t think I listened to Dre or Ice Cube or Snoop once because it was like I needed to feel Biggie and Jay-Z and KRS-One. I needed to feel that in my oats. So John, I think when he met me, we just had this repertoire immediately. I think he was looking for a person who really encapsulated who this kid was. For me I think it was a hip hop poser look and a lot of vulnerability. So I hope, I think that’s maybe what John saw. I felt very comfortable in his hands. A relationship with a director should be one kind of like of a parent where you feel comfortable enough to go out and try things. You feel you have a certain amount of slack, but as soon as you get too far off in one direction, they pull you in. You’re still tethered. So it was quite lovely."
The star of Nickelodeon's Drake & Josh has dabbled in R rated films before, but The Wackness may be his biggest break. "I never really wanted to be typecast. That’s something I was worried about. But more so, it wasn’t like this big definitive decision that I was going to make this part to blow any preconceptions people had of me out of the water. It was that the material really spoke to me. It’s a movie that I would like to see. I felt comfortable in portraying this character because I thought I could bring some of myself to it. I identified with his weaknesses, which is usually the first thing that I identify with, with a character. I felt like with all those things, in some ways it’s a bit of a selfish endeavor considering it was really just me I was thinking about, that it would really make me happy to do this. And so I guess I’m hoping that the audience from Drake & Josh, or the people that do watch me, can take a leap of faith with me. I know I’ve never been seen in this arena before, except for something like Mean Creek, and that people can really dig what I’m trying to do. If they were 12 when I was doing Drake & Josh when I was 15, now they’re 18 and I’m 21 so really it’s like the perfect age to see the movie. If they’re too young, it’s up to their parents’ discretion. I hope they see it on DVD in a couple of years."
The Wackness is out in theaters now.
For the trailer, stills, poster and more movie info, go to the The Wackness Movie Page.
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of Sony Pictures Classics
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