Book adaptation took a true movie lover or two

Filmmakers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have made three feature movies together so far: “Sugar, “Half Nelson (which netted Ryan Gosling a best actor Oscar nomination) and “It's Kind of a Funny Story, opening this weekend. The couple just friends who work together came to Chicago to promote “Funny Story, based on Ned Vizzini's comic novel about a troubled teen boy who checks himself into a mental hospital rather than throw himself off the Brooklyn Bridge.

Q. What was the person or movie that made you want to become a filmmaker?

Fleck. We both grew up as big fans of the movies. I was ... watching “Siskel and Ebert when I was 6 or 7. Watching these two guys argue back and forth with passion and intelligence about movies! I just thought you went to movies to see an alien fly on the screen and then forget about it.

I didn't know you could approach a movie from a different point of view as they did. That was really exciting to me. The first thing I wanted to do was be a critic, like those guys! Then I started making short films and that was fun. I stuck with it.

Q. Spike Lee's “Do the Right Thing was the movie that really changed your life, wasn't it?

Fleck. Yes, it definitely was.

Q. What about you, Ms. Boden?

Boden. I can't say there was one movie like that. I do remember that in high school, I got into this elective class called Intro to Film. Usually, freshmen weren't allowed, but I pulled some strings.

That class introduced me to Robert Altman, and I wrote my first film paper on Robert Altman, “Nashville, “MASH and “The Player. That was the first time I thought about connections between films made by the same person. And it made me think: How does this person make films? That influenced me a lot.

Q. How did you manage to maintain the delicate balance between serious drama and the comic moments in “It's Kind of a Funny Story?

Fleck. We had the book as our guide. The book did such a wonderful job of that balance that it really did most of the work for us. The actors deserve a lot of credit for that as well. If there was anything that Anna and I did as directors, it was casting the right actors in those roles, people who weren't going to play it over-the-top crazy.

Q. What alterations did you make when adapting the book to film?

Boden. Mostly it was cutting down on some of the relationships and characters in the book. We created Bobby (played by Zach Galifianakis) as a combination of several characters in the hospital so we could focus on him.

We also made a major structural change. Craig goes to the hospital at the start of the film. The book led up that in the first 100 pages or so.

Q. As outsiders to the Hollywood system, what's your assessment of American movies in 2010?

Fleck. There's always been the big, giant budget for the most part mindless, escapist entertainment. Then there's been more nuanced, smaller-budgeted, character-driven stories.

I think “Inception this year has altered our perceptions of what big blockbuster movies can do in terms of being provocative and highly entertaining and explosive. We both really enjoyed that film.