Green Directs in Fast Forward

For a filmmaker who's built quite a considerable reputation by making movies that are uniquely quiet, sober, insular, and moody, David Gordon Green sure does laugh a lot.

Hailed by scores of critics and colleagues as one of the great talents of his generation, the 32-year-old indie icon is surprisingly casual and unassuming in conversation. He chuckles as he recalls his unlikely film training in, of all places, North Carolina. He testifies with pride that yes, he did work at a doorknob factory to make extra money even as his 2000 debut, "George Washington," was making its way onto top-10 lists around the country. As Mr. Green — whose new film, "Snow Angels," opens in New York next Friday — races through the expansive array of projects he is developing, he seems almost manic in his eagerness to tackle new and different challenges. And as he jumps from genre to genre, revealing a set of tastes and guilty pleasures that few of his fans would anticipate, his giddiness becomes infectious.

"I don't do anything because of a budget or theme," he said. "Everything I do is a passion project. I don't feel the need to sit back and collect paychecks. The kinds of movies I love — I love everything. There's this new book, 'Seagalogy,' about the various chapters in the life of Steven Seagal, that I was privileged enough to write the introduction for. I'm a big fan of the direct-to-DVD genre. Have you seen [Seagal's] new one called 'Urban Justice'? He's at this great point in his life now where he just sits back and has the stuntman kick for him."

So it's clear right from the start, as this ostensibly serious conversation takes an abrupt detour toward the life and times of Mr. Seagal, that Mr. Green is no arrogant auteur. Rather, he seems to be an artist excited by the crossroads he feels he is approaching, a director with the accolades of a veteran twice his age, the energy of an amateur half his age, and an unwavering commitment to try new things. During the next few months, Mr. Green will be delivering audiences a one-two knockout punch that will alter the way critics, fans, and studio heads think of him.

It took only four years and three titles to facilitate Mr. Green's rapid rise to stardom. In 2000, he caught people's attention with "George Washington," a romantic and tragic story about a group of working-class kids coming of age amid the heat and humidity of a North Carolina summer. In 2003, those first impressions were reinforced with "All the Real Girls," a delicate film about a young couple maneuvering through the growing pains of love and sex, victims of hormones and rational thought colliding for the very first time.

In 2004, Mr. Green was endorsed by one of his idols, the director Terrence Malick, who signed on as the producer of "Undertow," a gothic thriller about a reclusive family living in rural Georgia. Constructed as a more conventional narrative, "Undertow" received a lukewarm response from critics and fared dismally at the box office, leading Mr. Green to focus more on his writing.

"I had always kind of thought I would be a writer, anyway," he said, "that it would be writing, not directing, that would be the more realistic way into the industry."

So it was as a screenwriter that Mr. Green originally became involved with "Snow Angels," for which he was hired to adapt the Stewart O'Nan novel about a community in rural Pennsylvania and two families unexpectedly united by tragedy. It was only later, when the assigned director abandoned the project and the film's fate was thrown into jeopardy, that Mr. Green agreed to direct his adaptation of the story. "Snow Angels" draws on themes from each of Mr. Green's previous works, fusing the rural, working-class pace of "George Washington," the mysteries of young love that occupied "All the Real Girls," and the claustrophobia of an isolated existence in "Undertow."

"The first thing I did was take the script back a few drafts," he said, pointing specifically to the movie's revised third act, in which the intimacy of a close-knit community goes from being an asset to a liability. As a woman (Kate Beckinsale) is unable to escape the reach of her stalker — her alcoholic, born-again ex-husband (Sam Rockwell) — their game of cat-and-mouse builds to a horrifying sequence in which violence erupts in the name of love and religion. At the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where the film made its premiere, it was this late, violent alteration to the story that left audiences gaping. Mr. Green described the climax as a moment that is memorable precisely because of his changes to the script, as well as his commitment to an unusual form of improvisation.

"It's something I try to do a lot, to encourage actors to improvise and to create an environment where there's a degree of passion and tension, where they truly don't know what the actor looking at them is going to say," he said. "And you can see the difference on-screen. I call it the 'reality of listening,' and if it looks like the character is truly listening, unsure of how to respond, or if it looks like they have just done their hair and makeup, and are merely reading the lines."

It's an unconventional style, this "reality of listening," but then again, everything about Mr. Green's career seems unconventional. After "Snow Angels," he'll veer off in an entirely different direction to work with the likes of Judd Apatow and Seth Rogan in "The Pineapple Express," a sure-to-be mainstream stoner comedy set for a fall release. From there, the eager and anxious director points to nearly a half-dozen projects in various stages of development, from an adaptation of the novel "The Dwarf," by the Nobel Prize-winning author Pär Lagerkvist, to "The Innocent Man," a big-screen rendition of the nonfiction John Grisham novel.

As the list grows longer, and as Mr. Green's attention turns to "One in the Chamber," his idea for an action film set in the jungles of Cambodia, the chuckling resumes. In true Steven Seagal fashion, it turns out that Mr. Green is also a huge fan of Rambo. "But 'Chamber' is less like 'Rambo' than like 'Missing in Action III,'" he said. "You've seen that one, right? It's sweet."

So is it safe to assume, then, that Mr. Green's career as a dramatist is about to shift in favor of explosions and guilty pleasures?

"Oh, hell no! There are no cages allowed in my perception of this profession," he said. "I just want to keep this balance of the epic and intimate going. I do kind of wish I could clone myself, though. There's a lot to do."

ssnyder@nysun.com