Learning to live again

MANILA, Philippines - A moving love story about redemption, discovery and the value of life, Remember Me is the tale of ordinary people learning to live again after suffering extraordinary loss.

Years after college student Tyler Roth brother killed himself, Tyler still doesn’t know where to put his pain. He’s a good guy, but during a night out on the town, he confesses to a misdemeanor he didn’t commit and gets in trouble with a heavy-handed cop. In a lighthearted game of payback, Tyler flirts with the cop’s attractive daughter, Ally, not realizing they share unexpected common ground.

When Ally reveals that her mother was brutally murdered, Tyler sees how deeply he has buried his own private grief. He and Ally fall in love, enabling them to take the first tentative steps out of their anguish. Their biggest obstacle is the truth: Tyler knows he has to admit to Ally why he first asked her out — and risk losing her.

Below are excerpts from the interview with Robert Pattinson, star of Remember Me:

Was there a time where you were sitting with Alan Coulter and the producer and something clicked for you? Can you talk about why you were attracted to this character, and about taking that step to produce?

Well, the producing thing. (laughs) I’m kind of embarrassed about the producing thing because I wasn’t really acting like a proper producer. I only really came on after the shoot just to kind of help Alan and Nick make sure that the product was what the product in which we all wanted to make in the end. It was the summer after the first Twilight thing. I read it then and I met with Alan and Nick. I thought they were really great, and I talked to them for hours about it. I think basically what I commented to them about was, what shocked me was I was reading a ton of scripts and it just didn’t fall into any, the way the dialogue was written and the plot was structured, it didn’t fit into any kind of normal category. It didn’t seem very formulaic. I had just read tons and tons of formulaic scripts in one genre or another and it was just such a relief to find that. There was also something about Tyler, the way he reacted to things seemed very relatable to me, and I hadn’t seen another character like it in like 100 scripts. It seemed like the perfect fit.

He’s a rebellious character, especially against his father. Were you attracted to that idea?

I mean, I don’t know if it was so much about just the rebellion that interested me. I liked how it seemed like Tyler didn’t really know what he was rebelling against. It seemed like no matter what his father was like, no matter what everyone around him is like, he’d still be rebelling. There was one interesting thing, I liked how he wasn’t fighting against everybody, he only chose to fight against his father. I think it was a pretty broken family to begin with, and I think he just takes out all of his rage on his father because his father is the only one who can take it. I mean if he tried to attack his mother, she’d probably end up killing herself or something. She’s too wounded to be able to take that. I don’t think it’s particularly typical rebel. It just comes in fits and starts all the time, so I think he’s kind of faking it. I think what he’s really rebelling against is himself.

Both characters seem to really be embracing life, and I think audiences will really come away with that. What do you think is the overall feeling around love. What will people learn from watching this film?

I think one of the things, which I always liked about it, is that he doesn’t. Like when you meet someone who you feel whatever for, it doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s a finish line, and that’s like “oh you’ll be alright now afterwards.” I think that worked in the relationship with Ally and Tyler. I think it’s to show that it’s sort of ok to have, if you just have one moment of happiness, where you can feel that you’re happy, even if it just lasts for a minute. It’s worth a lot. Because I think people now, everyone does all of these things because they think they should be happy like all the time. Doing therapy, and taking anti-depressants and all of these things. If you’re happy all of the time, it’s difficult to acknowledge when you actually are happy.

This movie is so steep. The locations are amazing in the film, and it feels so authentically New York. What’s interesting to me is so much of the cast aren’t New Yorkers and don’t have a New York accent, and your Brooklyn accent is on point. I wonder if, working on that, what kind of research you did, or if you knew a lot about New York in 2001. And what it was like to film in the streets of New York?

My sister lived in New York for like five years and I used to go visit her all the time. I don’t know. When I read the script there seemed to be a sort of voice that was just there as soon as you read it. I’ve never had a dialect coach or anything. Ironically I’ve only had a dialect coach for this film I’m doing now, which I’m doing now in an English accent. (laughs) I guess I’ve forgotten how to do an English accent.

But what was it like for you to film in Queens, at NYU, what was that like?

It was nice. Obviously it was great for doing stuff at NYU, you’re filming at NYU, which is perfect. I like this bar, I went in there a few times before we starting shooting. That’s not really research. (laughing) Oh yeah I just went to a couple of bars. (laughs)

It reminded me of James Dean on a slight, with the Rebel Without A Cause. Did you think of him in sort of a classical way? When you said he’s rebelling against himself, that this is just someone who’s just someone who’s sort of in a fury about the way the world is.

I think it’s a fairly typical state to be in. I think there’s that element, but I was also interested in the kind of, in Tyler there was a lot of elements of sort of arrogant things about him, which I thought were quite interesting. To have a loss in your family, and then I think a lot of the fighting in his family is because he feels like the attention has kind of gone off of him a bit. You have these petty things, which turn you into this iconic rebel or whatever, and it’s just based on these silly things, kind of like almost despicable emotions that you have about it. I tried to make that apparent in Remember Me. There’s a reason why James Dean stereotype is so common, especially in actors, I think. I think its pretty real. It’s also an ideal for young guys I think. I think, anyway. Because as soon as you stop struggling against something, what have you got to do? That’s the whole point being young, struggling against things.