Interview with Jesse Andrews, author, scriptwriter, and hilarious human

Jesse Andrews, the author of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, which is not only an incredible book but also a phenomenal movie, is one of the most hilarious people I’ve ever met. I was laughing multiple times throughout our interview, and despite us talking about some difficult topics, he still managed to keep it light and refreshing—just like his book.

“I wanted to make something that’s a little more about the messiness and the ugliness of it. But also make it hilarious,” Andrews said about his inspiration for the book.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is also a unique “cancer book” because it doesn’t focus on cancer, or on Rachel who has cancer. Instead, it focuses on Greg. Andrews explained that that was just what ended up happening in the book, mainly because you don’t get access to Rachel’s emotions surrounding her cancer. “It’s a story of a dude who hasn’t learned to pay attention to the people around him and even when he does it in this kind of superficial ways, it’s still not at the level of depth that has to happen,” Andrews said.

Andrews also wrote the script for the movie adaption of the book and described how in the movie you see more of Earl and Rachel’s characters than in the book. However, the movie still carries the same discussion of how much of a relationship you can have with someone before they die. “It’s still not enough, and you wish you had gotten more. And so by the end…it should feel like a reflection of that. Of the sadness that you couldn’t connect to her and learn as much about her as you could’ve. But can you ever? I don’t know.”

He also explained how things have to change from a book to a movie, mainly because of the format. “In the book, Greg and Earl end up making a movie for Rachel that is just incredibly disappointing and bad,” said Andrews. “In the movie, the movie they make for her, while it still definitely falls short of whatever it’s trying to do, it’s much more beautiful and moving. It’s a partial victory, it’s also a partial failure. But if you were to put a total failure on the screen at that time it would just feel like a sick joke…It would just sabotage the entire emotional rhythm of the entire film.”

In the book, Greg “writes” the book, and the way in which he tells the story of his and Rachel’s relationship is an interesting one. For Andrews, it was the most interesting part because he got to explore who Greg was.

“He [Greg] is interested enough in conveying things in how they are…you know the book is entirely about, you know, whatever you would’ve wanted to happen, it doesn’t matter. Here’s what actually happened. And it was sad. And it was frustrating. Here’s how I actually behaved and it wasn’t what I wanted to have done, but I did it.”

However, what made it the easiest to get into Greg’s head was that Andrews didn’t plan out the book too much. “I didn’t really plan the book out that much, and so I was really able to get into his headspace while I wrote it. You know, I knew what was going to happen at the end, and I knew mostly how I was going to get there, but each chapter was its own little problem to solve.”

Greg is an incredibly unique character in YA, because he is quite blunt about how he feels about high school (he hates it). I asked Andrews about where that came from, and how Greg became Greg, and he told me that Greg was a character who he hadn’t seen in YA before. One who was honest about his thoughts towards his life. Therefore, Greg’s voice was an integral part of the story’s development.

“I wrote a bunch of narration and a bunch of stuff of him talking that didn’t make it into the book early on because I realized that that wasn’t actually his voice, and it took a while to get to his voice.”

Greg struggles to come to terms with the fact that Rachel, his new friend, will die. Throughout the book he attempts to make their relationship meaningful and fulfilling, which Andrews touched on as being an element he intended to include in the narrative.

“My grandfather was terminally ill while I was writing this—and not that we were super close…but I was just thinking a lot about dying and death and the desire that one has to make sense of it and to have some kind of exchange and interaction with that person who may not be here much longer that will contain the entire relationship with them. You have that desire, but it never can actually be fulfilled… None of it is enough. It’s never enough, because the size of the relationship defies you [being able to] contain it.”

This interview was done as a part of the press for the Texas Teen Book Festival, but was conducted by me. For more press coverage of the festival, go here.