Alex Wolff Steps Behind The Camera For A Real, Raw Portrayal Of Youth

Alex Wolff has lived with Nick for a long time. Seven years at least. That's 1/3 of his young life. At 21 years old, the actor-singer-filmmaker has just released his first feature film, The Cat and the Moon, of which he wrote, directed, and starred in. Nick is the assignments weary protagonist, a teenage boy struggling with his own feelings and carrying the burden of a dead father and an addict mother. There really are parts of Nick that are ripped from the very flesh and bone and paranoia of Wolff himself — he is a young person living in New York, cycling by means of the motions of "growing up"; his father was a jazz musician whom he imagined genius. It's indulgent storytelling, yes, however it's no far less effective.


Wolff began writing The Cat and the Moon if he was 15. At first, it was a distraction, a way concentrate on something other than finals and schoolwork. Although because the characters on the page became actual people in his mind, something real, something lived-in, started to take shape. He wasn't just telling his story; he was telling his companions stories, also. The story of being young and confused, alone and with each other, in New York City.


"Nick is some amalgamation of me and the characters in my life," Wolff told MTV News at a recent press day for the film. "He borrowed pieces of me, and borrowed pieces of kids I grew up with. There is a lot of myself in Nick, plus a lot of myself in Eliza, and also a lot myself in all of the different characters in it."


Nick upset. He is a ticking time bomb. Although he isn't all rage and untapped emotion; he's sensitive and funny, charmingly so. It's easy to be able to see why Eliza (Stefania LaVie Owen) is so intrigued by him, and how, in return, Nick is so captivated by someone grounded like Eliza — even if she happens to be his friend Seamus's (Skyler Gisondo) girlfriend. Wolff's young characters are real and raw, some days even frustratingly so. "I believe in characters not being fully good or completely bad," he mentioned. "I don't judge my characters."


Nick makes fast companions with classmates Seamus and Russell (Tommy Nelson). They get high. They drink. They party. They mention "bro" earnestly. They're kids who make bad decisions without even thinking — Seamus cheats on Eliza once he gets wasted; Russell says slurs he shouldn't. And Wolff is aware you could hate them. He's OK with that. "As long as you didn't hate Nick," he clarified.


This is Nick's story, immediately considering that. And he, like us, exists in the uncomfortable state of just being. It's not a surprise that Wolff was heavily influenced by the works of the Dardenne brothers. ("Kid With a Bike, Two Days, One Night, and L'Enfant were movies I saw where I felt that plot was not the priority," he mentioned. "The priority was that all of those characters were full, and that's all that mattered.") This isn't a coming-of-age story about the power of friendship and the magic of prom; Nick isn't attempting to get laid by graduation. Case in point, Wolff's characters do not even waste their breath on talking about the future. They're in the here and now.


"These movies about young people, they make the lead guy this wimpy, sensitive guy who just hopes the girl takes him to prom," Wolff mentioned. "I just noticed it to be much more perplexing that you could have a character who seems tough and smoked cigarettes, and does all this stuff, and is a virgin, is super sensitive. And also you have a girl who's just attempting to figure stuff out, nevertheless she's super sweet and not mysterious. She's so open with her thoughts and feelings."


Wolff and Owen on the set of Cat and the Moon


That openness is what initially drew Owen to the project. She had read an early draft of the script five or six years prior on set Coming by means of the Rye. She was 16, and Wolff had asked for her feedback. "I loved the dynamic between all the companions and the conversations they had," she told MTV News. "Alex actually is a young person and he understands how teenagers converse with each other, which makes a difference, because it seems more real."


Any time Wolff asked her to portray Eliza a number of years later, it was an immediate yes. "I haven't really worked with plenty of people my age before," she added. "It was cool to experience being in a film with people that were the same age, and we were going via same sorts of things at the same time." That proper relationship between Wolff and the cast — and all the messiness and intensity that happens any time whenever you get a crowd of teens in a room with each other — transcended his own lens; it bled into the very framework of the film. Yet that instability is precisely what lingers. The Cat and the Moon is both tender and rough around the edges; it's someone pondering the meaning of their own art while also making it.


"Nicolas Cage mentioned the coolest thing ever to me," Wolff recalled. (He recently wrapped a film with Cage.) "He mentioned, 'Alex, you're the total filmmaker… You're in the movies, you're writing them, directing them.' It meant a lot to me any time if he mentioned that. I'll probably don't get that again."


Somehow, that's hard to believe.