Paranoid Park: An exclusive interview with Gabe Nevins
Gabe Nevins, star of Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park, talks about skating, teenage life and working with Gus Van Sant.
HUCK: How much skating had you done before the film? You're a proper skater aren't you, you didn't just do it for the film?
Nevins: Maybe three years, it's a really big hobby of mine.
HUCK: What are your best tricks?
Nevins: 360 flip, maybe a big spin.
HUCK: Gus Van Sant has a reputation as a very easy-going filmmaker. Is this the case? Good atmosphere on set?
Nevins: The whole time I was filming, I thought, "Wow, I thought this was going to be way harder.” I stressed out on some scenes, but when we came to do it, I was just, like, really surprised at how easy it was. Gus just made things so simple. It was easier than I thought. Gus really has an easy way of making films.
HUCK: Is this the first film you've worked on – how was his style?
Nevins: Gus had a basic idea of what he wanted. Then, we'd talk about the scene, me and whoever else was in the scene and just bounce ideas off each other all the time. We did a lot of improv. We’d talk about what might look better and pretty much just go for it and see how it turned out.
HUCK: There's a rare realism in the film. Did you find that the vision of teenage life in Portland that Gus Van Sant created mirrored your own?
Nevins: It's really realistic. The scenes he captures of most of the spots, they stand out. The big hill, and Burnside skatepark. But more, even just the trees. He got a good sense of Portland. He knows a lot about the teenage youth. Most ideas he came up with were realistic and he captures a lot of what I do and get up to on a day-to-day basis.
HUCK: You're in almost every scene. That's not just a lot of responsibility but a lot of work too. Did you feel a lot of pressure?
Nevins: While we were filming I didn't know what was going to happen or how the film would turn out and it was so laidback on set that I didn't really think about that. I never really had that much pressure on me. If I had, it probably would have turned out way differently.
HUCK: What would be the key message you'd like people to take away from the film?
Nevins: I'd have to say, like, a lot of things can happen to any teenager, there's so much that can go on. We'd just like to show how the average teenager would put up with it. Things like divorce, girlfriends and school.
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Paranoid Park is in cinemas now.
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