There has always been an appetite for stories about kids who are “wise beyond their years”. We love Matilda and The Great Brain and Encyclopedia Brown because they flatter us with the idea that I was one of those kids too, it’s just that nobody noticed while it was happening. We’ve been conditioned to think of growing up as settling, when wonder and optimism gives way to some sort of resignation that’s thought of as “realism”. But the reason we go back to Rory Gilmore and Lady Bird and Antoine Doinel is that they seem to grapple with the encroachment of adulthood and how to manage their own expectations about what it might be. We all did it, we all still are.

As someone who is 1000 years old and grew up in Chicago, I was a teenager during what historians call the John Hughes Years. Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink, and Ferris Bueller all came out while I was in high school - in fact, I actually interviewed Hughes for my school paper. It wasn’t exactly whoa, this is just like my real life - I was a city kid, not one of those posh suburbanites - but there was something specific about the version of teenager that inhabits these worlds that was deeply familiar to me. The one thing Hughes kids couldn’t stand was a hypocrite - the principal in TBC, Steff in PIP, Cameron’s unseen father in FBDO. The kids promised each other that they’d never turn into that, that they’d always be honest. When you’re that age, it’s what you promise yourself, too.

(A brief aside to mention that many elements of these movies have not aged well! And not just the part where James Spader is clearly 26! Maybe this is why their cultural relevance has faded somewhat. Gen X is hardly immune to gorging on nostalgia for its own youth, and I am no exception.)

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I imagined Eddie & Julie as a version of our story where the protagonists just… aren’t scared. The possibility of imminent disaster can actually be a pretty good motivator, if you’re in the right mindset. What if you’re having one of those magical romantic nights of your teenage life, where everything keeps lining up, and then all of a sudden: a missile is coming. What if you tried to fit in everything you could think of that you hadn’t done yet? What could be more romantic than that? Maybe you’d start small and then it escalates and escalates… how much could you squeeze into 20 minutes?

How lucky we are that our brilliant Casting Director Marika brought in Katherine and Jordan for these roles. Katherine is the daughter of a couple of other fantastic Chicago actors (you can see them all in the film Ghostlight), and she created a Julie that is warm and playful and just full of life and optimism. Jordan made such a great Eddie - excited and romantic, the kind of kid we all want to pretend we were. And then we got an absolute all-star team for the supporting roles: Marvin Quijada as the cabbie, Brian Plocharczyk as Quincy the doorman, and the hilarious 

Sadieh Rifai and Yousof Sultani as Eddie’s parents. This is a clinic on how a great actor can turn a small part into something real and funny and thrilling to listen to.