WWTW Interview: ‘The Wackness’ writer/director Jonathan Levine

Jonathan Levine got the jump on ’90s nostalgia with last year’s drug dramedy “The Wackness.”

Popular culture devours the past at an alarming rate, but there haven’t been many films to look back on that time period, at least not yet.

“The decade hasn’t been overanalyzed from a historical perspective,” the writer/director says. “There hasn’t been enough perspective yet to figure out what the era represented.”

So Levine chose 1994 as a backdrop for his unconventional coming of age story, released Jan. 6 on DVD.

Young, disillusioned Luke (Josh Peck) earns extra money by peddling pot on the streets of New York. He also uses his product to buy psychiatric services from Dr. Squires (Sir Ben Kingsley), a father figure who could use some counseling himself.

Levine recalls plenty of drama surrounding the volatile year in question. The death of Kurt Cobain. The People vs. O.J. Simpson. Hip hop crossing over into white culture. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s Big Apple. The rise of anti-depressant and Ritaline use.

The writer/director, who graduated from high school in the mid-90s, used those memories to help forge his tale.

“There are a lot of challenges to writing something that’s personal … you have to step out of your own skin and analyze it as a director as well,” he says.

He got a helping hand from the film’s Oscar winning co-star. Levine watched a Sir Ben quadruple feature at home the night before meeting the actor.

“The breadth and diversity of his roles is incredible, but he hadn’t done anything like this before,” Levine says of the Dr. Squires character.

Getting Sir Ben to star in your movie is all well and good, but “The Wackness” hinges on the story’s flawed hero, Luke.

Casting the character proved traumatic.

“I was very, very nervous about it. I didn’t know what I was looking for,” he says. “There aren’t a lot of great roles for actors in their late teens, early 20s. We had our pick from an amazing group [of actors].”

Peck, a native New Yorker, brought “a sense of authenticity that I hadn’t seen,” Levine says of his young star. The actor also knew about hip hop culture. “I didn’t want anything to ring false.”

But the kind notices for “The Wackness,” including an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Screenplay, hasn’t opened up every door for Levine.

His first feature, the horror indie “All the Boys Love Mandy Lane,” has yet to hit theaters or DVD. Levine says Sony has bought the film’s DVD rights (you can currently buy it on DVD in England, he advises) but he hopes it makes its way into theaters first.

(Photo: Luke (Josh Peck) and Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby) hit the streets to sell “ice cream” in “The Wackness”)