May 04, 2010 12:00PM EDT

Q&A: Freakonomics

Freakonomics the book is almost, well, a freak occurrence, at least if you ask economist Steven Levitt. When publishers approached him to do a book based on his theories with journalist Stephen Dubner, he said, "My response was, 'Go and read my academic papers first. They're the most boring things in the world. And come back if you still think it would be interesting.'" Since then, Freakonomics and its sequel SuperFreakonomics have sold millions of copies worldwide, and its big screen adaptation attracted some of the most impressive crowds at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival.

Levitt admitted, "Somehow Dubner managed to take my academic stuff and make it interesting in the form of a book, but what I think all these people did was make it a thousand times more interesting by bringing it to the screen. I encourage you all to go to my web page and look at how boring the original research is; you'll wonder what in the world the magic is that all these people brought to it."

Not everyone saw Freakonomics' potential for a big-screen adaptation, but producer Chad Troutwine did. After reading the book, he thought, "If someone makes a movie about this, it's not something I would like to see. It's something I would have to see." With help from the director he called "my cohort from the very beginning," Seth Gordon, Troutwine went about recruiting some of the hottest documentary filmmakers in the industry right now: Alex Gibney, Morgan Spurlock, Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady, and Eugene Jarecki.

Gordon, who directed The King of Kong, told an audience the next day, "We realized as the process evolved that maybe what we needed was a through line to stitch everything together and give us a home base for the film, and also to find a way to get some of those great anecdotes from the book that weren't necessarily a full chapter into the movie." Those were the parts he directed, including a very funny bit about Levitt's scheme to potty-train his daughter with M&Ms, only to find himself manipulated by a chocolate-hoarding 3-year-old. "It was a really organic progress, which was really interesting to be a part of because I think each of the filmmakers was off on their own, doing their own thing, and you couldn't measure the progress of the other chapters, so the sense that this thing was real was actually [elusive]. What are we doing, you know? Which troubles you as a documentarian, anyway, but that's sort of times five in this case."

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (Jesus Camp, 12th & Delaware) directed one "chapter" that was about an experiment that Levitt and his colleagues were conducting in participation with the University of Chicago: they basically bribed 9th graders to improve their grades and attendance at school. At first, however, Grady was quite skeptical. "I was writing all over the margins of the book, 'How the hell do you make that visual?' 'That's interesting, but what do you do with data?'" However, once she and Ewing talked to Levitt and he described the experiment they would be conducting, she knew that would be their angle. "We wanted something to be unfolding in front of our camera as it happened, we wanted to film something where the audience, ourselves, or the economists didn't know how it was going to turn out…. I was very impressed that [Steven] would let our cameras in on an experiment that was really—he was unclear [whether it] would be a success or not."

While Dubner had quipped the night before that all he and Levitt had to do was show up and drink coffee, he did say, "I shared most peoples' idea that this was not material that was well-suited for any screen, large or small, that things needed to be explained in a certain way that the page can really do well. Obviously, I was proven extremely wrong, because I think it's a phenomenal film and all these folks did amazing work."

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Magnolia Pictures will be releasing Freakonomics this fall.