page_title: The Go-Getter (2007 film)
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: The Go-Getter (2007 film) / Production / Development
caption_attribution_description: English: Actress Zooey Deschanel at the 57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival.57th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival | 2014 Film Society Awards Night
context_page_description: The Go-Getter is a 2007 American independent road film directed and written by Martin Hynes. The film stars Lou Taylor Pucci, Zooey Deschanel, and Jena Malone. In the film, 19-year-old Mercer steals a stranger's car to embark on a road trip to find his estranged brother and tell him that their mother has died. He communicates with the car's owner, Kate, via her cell phone while he travels.
  The story was based partially on Hynes's own experiences. After his mother died, and his marriage ended, he took a road trip of his own and wrote "different things," some of which came together in the script for The Go-Getter. Before production began, Hynes and three other crew members traveled to almost every location visited in the film to perform a test shoot, trying various filming styles and techniques. Filming took place between October and November 2005 in Oregon, Nevada, California, and Mexico. Singer and guitarist M. Ward provided most of the music for the film, complemented by songs from The Black Keys, Elliott Smith, The Replacements, and Animal Collective.
context_section_description: Writer-director Martin Hynes referred to the film as "very uncomfortably autobiographical". He had learned that his mother was diagnosed with cancer when making his 1999 film The Big Split. His marriage ended soon after his mother died, which Hynes saw as "a huge amount of loss". After deciding that "I have to do less," he took a road trip, spending much of his time writing as he traveled. He wrote "really different things", some of which were pieced together and led to his script for The Go-Getter, which he wrote in 2004. Within six months of the script's completion, producer Lucy Barzun Donnelly had raised the entire budget of the film without any actors attached at the time.
  Barzun Donnelly recommended to Hynes that he consider Lou Taylor Pucci for the lead role of Mercer, believing that he was "perfect". Hynes watched Pucci's 2005 film Thumbsucker and thought that "We'd be so lucky to have him." He contacted Pucci about the role but was leaving for Norway in less than a week to attend a friend's wedding and wanted to meet with him before leaving. Pucci was in San Francisco on a press tour and Hynes flew from Los Angeles to have lunch with him. Hynes said of the meeting, "I think we really [got] each other," and Pucci accepted the role a week later. Jena Malone signed on to portray Joely because she "loved the script" and was keen to play "a woman on the cusp of learning to toy with her [...] sexual manipulation"; she only later learned that Hynes had written the role with her in mind, having previously worked with her on the short film Al as in Al. Hynes said that Zooey Deschanel, Maura Tierney, and Bill Duke each joined the cast because they "read [the script] and really liked it". He made a deliberate attempt to cast Deschanel and Malone against their previous types. He described Deschanel as a "glamour girl" and Malone as a sexually mature woman.
caption: Zooey Deschanel was cast against her previous types as a "glamour girl"
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