The Go-Getter is a 2007 American independent road movie directed and written by Martin Hynes. The film stars Lou Taylor Pucci, Zooey Deschanel, and Jena Malone. In the film, 19-year-old Mercer (Pucci) steals a stranger's car to embark on a road trip to find his estranged brother and tell him that their mother has died. He communicates with the car's owner, Kate (Deschanel), via her cell phone while he travels.
The story was based partially on Hynes's own experiences. After his mother died, and his marriage ended, he took a road trip of his own and wrote "different things," some of which came together in the script for The Go-Getter . Before production began, Hynes and three other crew members traveled to almost every location visited in the film to perform a test shoot, trying various filming styles and techniques. Filming took place between October and November 2005 in Oregon, Nevada, Mexico and California. Singer and guitarist M. Ward provided most of the music for the film, complemented by songs from The Black Keys, Elliott Smith, The Replacements and Animal Collective.
The Go-Getter debuted on January 22, 2007 at the Sundance Film Festival and was given a limited theatrical release on June 6, 2008 by Peace Arch Entertainment. Its run lasted just three days, and it grossed only US$11,931. Critics were divided in reaction to the film; some praised the performances, the dialogue and the cinematography, while others thought it was unoriginal, forgettable and poorly acted.
Plot
One ordinary day, 19-year-old Mercer White (Lou Taylor Pucci) steals a Volvo station wagon from a car wash, and leaves Eugene, Oregon to find his estranged half-brother Arlen, who is unaware that their mother has recently died. Soon after leaving, a cell phone in the car rings, and Mercer finds himself talking to the owner of the car, Kate (Zooey Deschanel), who lends him her car on the condition that he calls regularly to describe his trip to her.
Mercer travels to a bohemian pottery-making commune in Shelter Cove, California where Arlen once lived, but learns that he moved to Reno, Nevada. He passes through Fallon, Nevada to meet up with the seductive Joely (Jena Malone), his middle school crush. In Reno, they take ecstasy and almost have sex before Mercer resumes his search for Arlen. Later he finds himself on the set of a pornographic film, where the director (Julio Oscar Mechoso) tells him that Arlen left to work at a pet store in Sacramento, California. Joely asks Mercer if he can drive her cousin Buddy (Colin Fickes) and his friend Rid (William Lee Scott) to Mojave, California, where they are building their own car. While driving, Mercer finds Kate's YMCA card in the trunk of her car and, now knowing what she looks like, describes a dream to her in which he, Joely and Kate are dancing in a re-enactment of Bande à part ' s dance sequence. Not wanting to get sidetracked, he tries to leave the others behind in a motel room, but when Buddy threatens to steal the car, Mercer tells him that the car belongs to his girlfriend, and Buddy, Rid and Joely leave without Mercer in Kate's car. He hitchhikes to Mojave and finds the salvage yard where Buddy and Rid are working, and retrieves the car.
Mercer talks to Kate while driving, imagining her sitting in the back seat of the car, but she hangs up in jealousy when he mentions Joely for the first time. He arrives in Sacramento and finds the pet store where Arlen worked. The owner (Maura Tierney) asks Mercer to sing in her children's band, for which she plays as part of her probation. When he returns to the car, he finds somebody trying to break into it, only to discover that it is Kate. They spend the night at a hotel, but he leaves without her the next morning and catches a train to Los Angeles, California. With the help of a translator, he phones Arlen's last residence and learns from a Hispanic woman that Arlen is working at a hotel in Ensenada, Mexico. Mercer finally meets Arlen (Jsu Garcia) at the hotel in Ensenada, but Arlen tackles him to the ground when he immediately assumes that Mercer is looking for money. Kate later finds a bloody Mercer sitting on the side of a road and takes him to a hotel. She tells him that she let him take her car because she was attracted to him, and they have sex. The next day Mercer meets with Arlen again, more amicably, and tells him that he and Kate are driving to Louisiana to spread his mother's ashes.
Production
Development
Writer-director Martin Hynes referred to the film as "very uncomfortably autobiographical". He had learned that his mother was diagnosed with cancer when making his 1999 film The Big Split . His marriage ended soon after his mother died, which Hynes saw as "a huge amount of loss". After deciding that "I have to do less," he took a road trip, spending much of his time writing as he traveled. He wrote "really different things", some of which were pieced together and led to his script for The Go-Getter , which he wrote in 2004. Within six months of the script's completion, producer Lucy Barzun Donnelly had raised the entire budget of the film without any actors attached at the time.
Barzun Donnelly recommended to Hynes that he consider Lou Taylor Pucci for the lead role of Mercer, believing that he was "perfect". Hynes watched Pucci's 2005 film Thumbsucker and thought that "We'd be so lucky to have him." He contacted Pucci about the role but was leaving for Norway in less than a week to attend a friend's wedding and wanted to meet with him before leaving. Pucci was in San Francisco on a press tour and Hynes flew from Los Angeles to have lunch with him. Hynes said of the meeting, "I think we really each other," and Pucci accepted the role a week later. Jena Malone signed on to portray Joely because she "loved the script" and was keen to play "a woman on the cusp of learning to toy with her sexual manipulation"; she only later learned that Hynes had written the role with her in mind, having previously worked with her on the short film "Al as in Al". Hynes said that Zooey Deschanel, Maura Tierney and Bill Duke each joined the cast because they "read and really liked it". He made a deliberate attempt to cast Deschanel and Malone against their previous types. He described Deschanel as a "glamour girl" and Malone as a sexually mature woman.
Filming
Four months before filming began, Hynes asked Barzun Donnelly to set US$20,000–25,000 aside from the film's budget so that he could perform a test shoot. Hynes, cinematographer Byron Shah, a camera assistant and a stand-in for Mercer—as Pucci had not yet been cast—travelled to every location in the film except for Mexico. Over 2,000 miles (3,219 km), they shot 8,000 feet (2,400 m) of film, testing different filters, lenses, film stocks and shooting styles. Hynes wrote an 85-page shot list, "scop out" the entire film. He called the test shoot an "incredible boon" and remarked that "Not one frame of it ended up on the movie, but it paid for itself time and time again." After returning to Los Angeles, he visited each of the locations (including Mexico) again with the principal and technical crews.
Principal photography began in mid-October 2005 and continued through November over a total period of 25 days. The film was shot in sequence, with production starting in Eugene, Oregon and then moving to Reno, Nevada and subsequently Ensenada, Mexico. Hynes called the filming "a high-wire act the whole way", and said that one of the biggest challenges was transporting the crew of 40 from Oregon to Mexico, sometimes changing locations twice a day with few hours of daylight. A crew member lost the project's filming permit on the last day of shooting in Mexico, and filming at rush hour was halted by the police. Hynes took a smaller camera to film several blocks away from the original set, but the second assistant director soon arrived warning that the police were coming and that they would be taken to prison because they did not have the paperwork for filming. Hynes and the crew "scatter", leaving Pucci alone further down the street, which Hynes claims is his strangest experience in the film industry. The crew later returned to Los Angeles to shoot final scenes and to commence post-production.
Music
When searching for the film's music, one of the producers suggested to Hynes that he go to a Bright Eyes concert. Singer and guitarist M. Ward opened the show as a supporting act, and Hynes recalled thinking, "Holy shit! That's the guy. That's it. He's perfect!" Hynes sent an unsolicited script of the film to Ward, who read it and signed on to the project when there was no financing behind the film nor any actors attached. He told Hynes that any of his songs could be used in the film; Hynes said that, in post-production, he tested every one of Ward's songs, including instrumental versions, in the final cut. In the beginning of the film, Mercer comes across a band; Hynes had always intended for whichever song they were playing to become the overture of the film. Ward's song "Vincent O'Brien" became that overture, and described the continuous presence of Ward's mu
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