About halfway through “Morris from America,” 13-year-old Morris (Markees Christmas) pulls a sweater belonging to his crush over a pillow and slow-dances with it before leaning in for a kiss. Writer-director Chad Hartigan isn’t too embarrassed to admit the scene was inspired by real life.
“That pillow thing is 100 percent me,” Hartigan said. “In my life, when I was 12, I just went through a humping my pillow phase, which was normal for boys at the time. At one point I just got bored and was like, ‘How can I spice this up?’ So I put some of my clothes on it and slow-danced with it.”
At least one of Hartigan’s stars in the Sundance Film Festival darling can relate.
“I used to hump the floor. Like straight,” added Craig Robinson, who plays Morris’ father, Curtis. “I’d be down on the floor with my head to the door so nobody could get in.”
In the film, Curtis is a widowed soccer coach who relocates to Germany with his reluctant son. Unlike his new classmates, Morris doesn’t like EDM, he doesn’t like learning German and he doesn’t like the jerk kids at the local youth center. But he does like Katrin (Lina Keller), the slightly dangerous 15-year-old blonde who offers to be his friend.
Robinson’s mother taught high school and often brought him along on student trips, meaning he was “constantly around older girls that I was attracted to.” For Hartigan, Katrin is another example of art imitating life. She’s based on his first crush, a girl whose name he has no trouble remembering: Kelly Adams.
“[She was] the real first girl I fell in love with, who did love me back, but as a friend,” Hartigan said. “We had the kind of relationship where we would talk on the phone every night and then be like, ‘I love you, I love you,’ and send each other notes during school. Mine would be like, ‘You’re an angel sent from heaven,’ and she’d write back, ‘Thanks. Wasn’t Tim cute today?'”
“Tim was cute today,” Robinson teased.
Like Kelly Adams, Keller is blond, and Hartigan jokingly suggested it might have been that quality that gave her an edge over the other actress they considered for Katrin, who was a brunette. What is it with boys and blondes?
“The reason I cast Lina was a self tape because I wasn’t in Germany yet,” Hartigan said. “She had all this marker on her arms; it looked like she had gotten seven phone numbers from the night before. I was like, ‘What is with this girl? She’s the one.’ And then we did it where the first time you meet her when they’re outside the castle, she has stuff written on her arms. You can’t really tell, but we stole that from her real life.”
Perhaps it’s these doses of authenticity that make “Morris from America” more than just another walk down the well-trodden coming-of-age path. Hartigan said that as a viewer, when a movie isn’t honest, it’s a real turnoff for him. He cites a quote he heard a long time ago (possibly by John Cassavetes, although he’s not sure) about how good art comes from a place of love and bad art comes from needing to be loved or looking for recognition. It’s a theme that’s deftly worked into Morris’ story as an aspiring rapper—when Curtis finds his lyrics about screwing girls, he accuses his son of not being honest in his art.
For Robinson, whose career has consisted of primarily comedy, working on “Morris from America” was a chance to be a little more artistically open, an experience he previously most typically found while playing with his band.
“That’s when I’m at my rawest. When I’m performing with the band. It’s just like the groove is going, whether we’re fast or slow, I can just transport myself,” the Chicago native said. “In acting, you get to that place where it’s serene, where you just feel it. I’m glad to be doing the drama because you can kind of take your time more and let a moment live more.”
As Curtis, Robinson tackles a role as a father, but also as a man struggling to adapt to his new life in a foreign country and a reality that doesn’t include his wife. The respect between Curtis and Morris is mutual, and sometimes the two seem more like friends than father and son.
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“He had to take on the role of toeing that line and figuring out who he is as a single parent who’s also both parents,” Robinson said. “A response I’ve been getting is ‘I wish that was my dad.’ … I really dug their relationship because he didn’t resort to smacking him or anything, and he respected him as a person. It’s like, look, OK, I’m going to chill, you chill out too.”
Hartigan said Curtis was written as his idealized version of how he imagines he’d be as a dad.
“When I imagine what makes a good parent, what would I do, it would be like in that car scene, for example,” he said. “Curtis knows he’s going to ground him. He could lead with that. He could be like, ‘All right, you’re in this much trouble.’ But that’s going to come. He just feels like it’s maybe better to lead with this other thing and just have that patience and that understanding. But I can totally admit if a real parent wants to be like, ‘Pff, good luck having that after 13 years.'”
Both in creation and in story, realism is key to “Morris from America,” but Hartigan admitted that he didn’t want to be so committed to reality that he missed out on opportunities to tell a bigger story. Truth can sometimes be revealed in exaggeration.
“I tried to allow myself the freedom to go for broke on emotional stuff,” Hartigan said. “There are some flourishes of fantasy or heightened reality in this one, and I didn’t want to be afraid of that.
“I do think that all iconic moments in movies are on the verge of being ridiculous. Think of the clay scene in ‘Ghost.’ If you just watch that you’re like, [what?]. But, they went 100 percent in on that scene and they did it. Or like the ‘Titanic’ scene on the boat. They just go all in. If you aren’t afraid to do that, that’s how you end up getting something that could be iconic.”
Is there a scene in “Morris from America” that hits that level? A scene that doesn’t seem especially realistic but in its elevation touches on something that everyone relates to? When Morris gets pulled onstage at an adult concert to perform his first public freestyle, there’s an element of “this wouldn’t happen,” but it hardly matters. Hartigan hits his mark, and the rush of fear and determination, then pride and worth that you experience on Morris’ behalf feels wholly real.