Movie 5050 By Jonathan Levine

Original Title: 50/50
Genre :
Release Date :
Runtime :
Nationality : United States
Director: Jonathan Levine
Screenwriter: Will Reiser
Composer:
Producer/s: Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen and Ben Karlin
Executive Producer: Nathan Kahane
Production Designer: Annie Spitz
Line Producer: Shawn Williamson
Associate Producer: Ariel Shaffir, Kyle Hunter, James Weaver
Director of Photography: Terry Stacey
Editor :
Costume Designer: Carla Hetland
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Synopsis

A young man turns a devastating illness into a unique opportunity to experience life in 50/50, a funny, touching and original story about friendship, love and survival starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen.         

            Adam Lerner (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has a pretty great life with a talented, sexy artist girlfriend and a great job, the 27-year old seems to have it all. But when Adam begins to suffer with agonizing back pain, he discovers that he has a rare and possibly fatal form of cancer. With a massive, malignant tumor growing along his spinal column, his life changes in a heartbeat. Coffee shops give way to chemotherapy clinics, art openings to counseling sessions and plans for the future to strategies for survival.

Writer Will Reiser experienced his own personal battle with cancer, and was inspired to write an original story which reflects the humor and heartbreak which collide in a touching and often hilarious journey through a world in which a young man is completely unprepared for. His best friend, Kyle (Seth Rogen), uses Adam’s condition to lure girls into sympathy sex, his overbearing mother (Anjelica Huston) loses sight of him in her own fears, his otherwise-occupied girlfriend, Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard) tries to distract herself an increasingly frantic social life, and Katherine (Anna Kendrick), the young therapist assigned to his case, struggles to keep up with the needs of her third client ever in an unexpectedly funny movie that reminds us that sometimes laughter really is the best medicine.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception, (500) Days of Summer),Seth Rogen (Knocked Up, Pineapple Express), Academy Award® and Golden Globe® nominee Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air, the Twilight Saga franchise), Bryce Dallas Howard (The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Spiderman 3) and Academy Award® winner Anjelica Huston (Prizzi’s Honor, The Royal Tenenbaums) star in 50/50. The film is directed by Jonathan Levine (The Wackness) from a script by Will Reiser (Da Ali G Show). Director of photography is Terry Stacey (Dear John). Editor is Zene Baker (Observe and Report). Production designer is Annie Spitz (Cyrus). Costume designer is Carla Hetland (The Butterfly Effect). Original music is by Academy Award® winner Michael Giacchino (Up).

Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg (Pineapple Express, The Green Hornet) and Ben Karlin (“The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” “The Colbert Report”) produced the film.  Nathan Kahane (Juno, Stranger than Fiction) and Will Reiser, are executive producers.

Cast


Joseph Gordon-Levitt ..... Adam
Seth Rogen ..... Kyle
Anna Kendrick ..... Katherine
Bryce Dallas Howard ..... Rachael
Anjelica Huston ..... Diane
Serge Houde ..... Richard
Andrew Airlie ..... DR. Ross
Matt Frewer ..... Mitch
Philip Baker Hall ..... Alan
Donna Yamamoto ..... DR. WALDERSON
Sugar Lyn Beard ..... SUSAN
Yee Jee Tso ..... DR. LEE
Sarah Smyth ..... JENNY
Peter Kelamis ..... PHIL
Jessica Parker Kennedy ..... JACKIE
Daniel Bacon ..... DR. PHILLIPS
P. Lynn Johnson ..... BERNIE
Laura Bertram ..... CLAIRE
Matty Finochio ..... TED
Luisa DOliveira ..... AGABELLE LOOGENBURGEN
Veena Sood ..... NURSE STEWART
Jason Vaisvila ..... CUTE GUY WITH DREADS
Brent Sheppard ..... MINISTER
Marie Avgeropoulos ..... ALLISON
Adrian McMorran ..... BARTENDER
Stephanie Belding ..... FRIENDLY NURSE
Andrea Brooks ..... ATTRACTIVE WOMAN #2
Ryan W. Smith ..... JOE
Karen van Blankenstein ..... NURSE SCOTT
William BIGSLEEPS Stewart ..... GEORGE
Bonnie Bollivar ..... ELDERLY FEMALE CHEMO PATIENT
Beatrice Ilg ..... PRETTY GIRL
Chilton Crane ..... MOTHER ON THE BUS
Amitai Marmorstein ..... YOUNG PERSON ON THE BUS
Lauren A. Miller ..... BODIE
Will Reiser ..... GREG
Richard C. Burton ..... THOM THE PATIENT
Neil Corbett ..... HOSPITAL TECH
Karolina Sabat ..... ART GALLERY PATRON
Christopher De Schuster ..... ART GALLERY PATRON
Susan McLellan ..... BAR GIRL

BEHIND THE SCENES OF50/50

Set in Seattle, 50/50 was shot entirely on location in and around Vancouver, British Columbia. Both Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg grew up in Vancouver, which has become a feature filmmaking hub, but neither had ever had an opportunity to work there before. “It was awesome,” says Rogen. “I hadn’t spent such a long stretch there since I was in high school. I’d like to make every movie there from now on.”

            Goldberg says that he and Rogen have attempted to shoot several projects in their hometown, without success. “When we were kids, they made tons of movies there, so we always figured when we did it, we’d do it there. We wrote Superbad to be set in Vancouver, but it was changed to the U.S. Pineapple Express was originally extremely Vancouver-specific. When it was made, we were told to just take out all the ‘Canadian crap.’ This was the one time we figured it was not going to happen, but Mandate saw that Vancouver made way more sense as a location than anywhere else. So, we finally got to shoot there and it was the best thing ever.”

Production designer Annie Spitz had worked with Levine on his previous film, The Wackness. The director and production designer began the pre-production process with a visit to Seattle where they checked out the city’s public radio station and a cancer clinic, as well as local bars and coffee shops, so they could replicate the right look and feel in Vancouver.
“Jonathan wanted a very realistic look,” Spitz says. “One of the first things that we did was visit the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Clinic and get a tour of the place. We wanted to make sure that everything in the movie replicated the details accurately. We were hoping to shoot at a real cancer clinic, but it’s very tough to get into a hospital location. We learned that there are very specific chairs that people sit in when they receive chemotherapy. So we looked all over for them and we couldn’t find any to rent in Vancouver. We ended up flying them up from Los Angeles for our set.”

The filmmakers found Adam’s house in a residential neighborhood in Burnaby, just outside Vancouver. “When I first saw it I knew that was the one,” says Spitz. “When you’re shooting in a house, you want a layout that’s as open as possible, so there are many places to put the camera and really high ceilings, because that’s the way they hide the lights. There was a cedar wall in the bedroom that I wanted to feature a lot. It read very specifically ‘Northwest.’ In fact, if we had selected another house, I would have put a cedar wall in.”
Joseph Gordon-Levitt brought his own ideas for Adam’s home. “Some of the best things about the house were based on Joe’s input,” the designer continues. “He wanted Adam to be very neat, a guy who is into cleaning, plants and baseball. It’s always fun when we get to collaborate with the actor.”

Adam’s girlfriend, Rachael, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, is a visual artist and some of her paintings are prominently displayed in Adam’s house. The filmmakers asked some of their artist friends to submit concepts for paintings. “There was cash prize for the best one,” says Spitz. “The producers picked their favorites and those became Rachael’s work in the movie.”

            During filming, the behind-the-scenes action on the set of 50/50 rivaled what went on in front of the camera. In the video village, where monitors allowed the filmmakers to evaluate playback almost instantly, producers Rogen, Goldberg and Karlin were frequently present, as well as associate producers James Weaver, Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir, writer and executive producer Will Reiser, Mandate executive Nicole Brown and line producer Shawn Williamson. “It was extremely collaborative,” says Reiser. “Seth and Evan are two of my best friends and we’d worked together before, so it was completely natural to do it this way.”          
Reiser was a permanent fixture during production. “It is unusual to have a writer on board for the entire run,” notes Karlin, “But it was a sign of respect for Will. And anyway, everybody liked hanging out together. We’re all very social, and we’re close enough in age and sensibility that it’s not difficult to be in the same room with these people. It was a lot of fun.”
Rather than being overwhelmed by the enormous amount of input he received, director Jonathan Levine found the process reassuring. “We had all these brilliant people watching the monitor and making sure that nothing slipped through the cracks,” he says. “As a director, you have a hundred different things on your mind. At any given time, you can focus on probably ten of them, but you’re concerned about forgetting about another 90. It ‘s really incredible to have such a strong support system.”

50/50 marks Reiser’s first screenplay and writing it has changed his worldview almost as much as having cancer did. “Before I got sick and wrote this script, cancer was not part of my life,” he says. “Now, I’ve made friends because of cancer. A world opened up in which people are constantly sharing their stories with me. They tell me how this movie connects with them and how touched they were by it because of their own experiences. That’s the ultimate compliment to me and I don’t think that hearing anything else would make me feel like I’d done my job as well.”

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