RECAP: The Endurance Of "The Spectacular Now" With Director James Ponsoldt
- William Glen Jones
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
13 years after its initial release, Ponsoldt's Georgia-based love story still remains a landmark in the state's filmmaking journey
When you search the keywords “Georgia filmmaker” or “Directors from Georgia,” you will almost always come across the name James Ponsoldt.
Ponsoldt, an Athens native, has been directing feature films and television for over twenty years. From his first film, Off the Black, to 2015’s biographical drama The End of the Tour, to his directorial work on acclaimed series like Shrinking and Wonder Man, all of Ponsoldt’s work can be defined by a palpable sense of humanity and tactility. Few American filmmakers are better equipped at crafting a vivid sense of time and place, and even fewer care as deeply about the people that inhabit these intimate spaces quite like Ponsoldt.
His 2013 film, The Spectacular Now, starring a young Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley (and a murderer’s row of acclaimed performers), remains, perhaps, his most popular and resonant work.
The film screened as part of the 50th Atlanta Film Festival on Tuesday, April 28 to an enthusiastic crowd. In an introduction before the screening, Ponsoldt expressed not only his admiration for the audience, but his long and storied history with the festival.
“I’ve been coming to this festival for as long as I can remember and, to me, it remains my favorite festival in the world,” Ponsoldt said. “This was the first festival I really knew about as a kid… and eventually I got to screen some of my own short films. It’s an honor to be here and to be included in this year’s lineup.”
The Spectacular Now, adapted from a novel by Tim Tharp, follows a life-of-the-party high school senior, Sutter Keely, played by Miles Teller, who, after a series of missteps, seeks refuge in, and eventually falls for, the studious and responsible Aimee Finecky, played by Shailene Woodley.
The film focuses on their unlikely romance and how it collides with Sutter’s self-destructive tendencies, all set against an Athens, Georgia backdrop.
The Spectacular Now, which was produced right on the cusp of the Georgia Film Tax Incentive gaining notoriety, remains one of the most vividly rendered portraits of the state.
While many productions in the intervening years have utilized the state’s various sound stages and resources to create the far-flung worlds of, say, Metropolis or Megalopolis, it remains staggering how few independent or studio films have truly attempted to capture Georgia’s exteriors and the rhythms of everyday life, and few do as authentically as The Spectacular Now.
Part of the authenticity of The Spectacular Now lies in its point-of-view. When pitching the film to independent financiers, Ponsoldt cited unexpected references like François Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel series and Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show, landmark films that did not resemble the clichés of coming-of-age films emerging from America in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Another key component of the film’s sense of authenticity, and arguably one of these reasons it has endured, was Ponsoldt and cinematographer Jess Hall’s critical decision to shoot the movie on 35mm celluloid, a practice that was routinely being phased out, especially for films of this intimate scale, circa 2013.
The filmic look, combined with the use of anamorphic lenses, creates a feel that remains both timeless and traps the movie’s landscape in a 2013-era amber that would make any Georgia resident (including myself) highly nostalgic.
Being able to film the entire movie in Athens was the cherry on top for Ponsoldt, a quasi-victory lap after his first two features, 2006’s Off the Black and 2012’s Smashed were filmed in New York and California, respectively.
Ponsoldt cited how filming The Spectacular Now in his hometown provided both a sense of comfort and familiarity, but also had its own unexpected set of challenges, namely the summer heat, loud insects, etc.
Yet, thirteen years later, Ponsoldt expressed how he would not have done things any differently and, in many ways, The Spectacular Now was a project he was destined to make, and destined to make in Georgia.
“I had to think – I’ve invited all these people here to play in this sandbox that I know so well, and they’re all hot and sweaty, helping to tell this story, and I was so grateful,” he said. “To some degree… all paths led me here, and you have to have faith that the universe meant for you to be exactly where you are. I especially felt that on this film.”
"The Spectacular Now” is currently available to stream. Ponsoldt is currently editing a new feature film for Apple TV+, which will be released next year.
