Q&A: Wonderful World

In an eloquent introduction to the premiere of his first film, director Josh Goldin quoted J. P. Getty on the secret of success: “It’s very simple. You get up really early, work incredibly hard, and strike oil,” he said, explaining that he had always been very good at the first two parts, but with Wonderful World, “I think I struck oil.”

Goldin cast his old friend Matthew Broderick as Ben Singer, a divorced misanthrope who can’t even be peppy around his tween daughter. A former children’s folk singer (celebrated musician Dan Zanes wrote the soundtrack and was also in the audience), Singer is now a proofreader at a nameless firm and his own delights appear to be getting stoned and playing chess with his Senegalese roommate, Ibu (Michael K. Williams, also of HBO’s The Wire; Williams also has a small role in Tell-Tale). After Ibu becomes ill and he loses his job, Singer’s dark view of the world is confirmed until he meets Ibu’s sister Khadi (Sanaa Lathan).

In the following Q&A, Goldin revealed that the character of Ibu was based on a Senegalese coworker of his at an insurance company, who had moved to America around age 8 and whose memories of Africa were, as Goldin said, tinged with “the dream and fantasy of childhood.”

Many members of the audience praised Matthew Broderick’s nuanced performance, which was central to Goldin’s character study. One audience member noted that she cried multiple times during the movie. Another audience member posited that Broderick purposely took on roles playing pessimists and underdogs to avoid being typecast as Ferris Bueller. Broderick laughed, noted that he played Bueller over two decades ago, and said that he really didn’t get offered to play many optimists. Goldin pointed out that he had originally envisioned the character of Singer as even angrier when he wrote the script, but that Broderick had instead played him as slightly more sad than mad. When asked if he really played the music in the film, Broderick, who has appeared in many musicals, said he sang, but that Zanes was his guitar double.
 

Wonderful World screens today, April 28, at 4:30 pm. Tickets are still available for that screening and Friday's screening.
 

Read more Festival Q&As .
 

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