Exhibit A that dreams sometimes do come true: Jonathan Levine premiered his new movie, "50/50," at the Ziegfeld Theater Monday night − 14 blocks from the upper East Side apartment in which he grew up — in front of his parents, Judy and Ira Levine, and childhood friends.Well, says the 34-year-old director, that's not 100% true.
Not even in the wild imagination of a kid who looked at the city through a camcorder viewfinder could he ever have pictured this.
"If I told myself when I was walking by the Ziegfeld as a kid that I would have a movie premiere there, I'd be like, 'That's bananas,' " says Levine.
"50/50," opening Friday, is a comedy loosely based on the real-life experience of screenwriter Will Reiser, who battled a potentially fatal form of spinal cancer during his 20s.
At the time, Reiser was an up-and-coming producer on "Da Ali G Show" working with a pair of writers, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who eventually convinced him to put his experience into a script. Rogen stars as an even less politically correct version of himself, the best friend to Will's on screen surrogate, Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).
Levine got hand picked for what he calls "probably the best script I'll ever direct " based on the job he did on 2008's "The Wackness," a coming-of-age movie about a drug-dealing teen struggling through the summer of 1994.
That movie, which he wrote, is very personal: "The only thing I didn't do was sell weed. I smoked a lot of weed, but didn't sell it."
New Yorker Jonathan Levine hits a career high. (Handschuh for News)Now that "50/50" is hitting theaters he no longer has to pretend he's the hardened professional and can admit to being completely star-struck by Anjelica Huston, who plays Adam's mother.
He apparently hid his nerves well. "Jonathan directed our cast seamlessly with the confi dence and calm of a seasoned director," says Huston.
"I did feel like I was in a new high school for a couple of days," says Levine. "It was only after a few weeks of shooting, that I felt like I could sit at the cafeteria table with them."
He earned his seat at the table, though: "50/50," a balance of comedy and drama that Levine handled deftly, debuted to a two-minute standing ovation at the Toronto Film Festival.
Levine has come a long way since the days when the Trinity School graduate had to dump pennies in a change machine to pay for gas, before he landed
his first big break, as the assistant to writerdirector Paul Schrader of "Taxi Driver" fame.
"I think I was really bad at it actually," says Levine.
"I just got an assistant two months ago for this movie. I had resisted for so long. But, dude, my assistant is so much better than I was that it makes me feel really bad."
"This movie" is "Warm Bodies," based on the novel by Isaac Marion about a zombie who falls for a teenage girl because of residual memories from consuming her boyfriend's brain. It's being touted as the next "Twilight."
"It's not so much people sitting and talking to each other," he says, comparing the big-budget movie to his past indie work. "A little more grunting and groaning."
Talking about himself in the restaurant of the Trump SoHo hotel seems to make him uncomfortable. Levine laments that the studio wastes money flying him fi rst class to his hometown for the "50/50" premiere.
He's still an outsider looking in − a guy who still roots for the Knicks in a business filled with slick Lakers fans. He doesn't even have a really good Hollywood gossip story to share.
"I'm trying to think of something like, 'I was at a party and someone was doing coke off a hooker's head,' but there's nothing like that," says Levine.
"Not yet."
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