Steve Rosen
Denver Post, August 10, 1998

Anything is an improvement upon high school.

In a way, that's the point of "Whatever," the new film from writer-director Susan Skoog now at the Mayan Theatre. Set in New Jersey during the early 1980s — the "just say no" years of the Reagan era - it is about alienated teens who aimlessly wander from drugs to sex, from alcohol to violence, from anger to boredom, from exhilarating rock 'n' roll to loneliness.

Much of the action is seen through the eyes of Anna Stockard, a young girl who often watches the goings-on with bemused detachment, yet is capable of caring deeply about her friends and future.

Anna wants to rebel from her troubled, divorced mom, yet she also loves and is concerned about her. She wants to study art in New York City, although she might not be good enough — or lucky enough — to get accepted.

She wants to lose her virginity to a boy who she thinks is tender and understanding. But she might not be mature enough to correctly judge his intentions. In short, she lives in a world of confusion, yet tries to act too cool to be concerned.

Anna is played convincingly by newcomer Liza Weil, who is just 21 but displays an extremely natural and confident screen presence. One reason is that she's talented. Although this is her first starring role, she's had small parts in short films, television episodes and in off-Broadway and regional theater. She lives in New York but was raised in Lansdale, Pa., not far from Philadelphia.

But another is that Weil intuitively understands Anna's predicament. She, too, was dissatisfied with high school.

"I think there were a lot of aspects of Anna I identified with," Weil says during an interview at the Oxford Hotel's Cruise Room.

Articulate and eager, Weil speaks rapidly and with great conviction, then laughs nervously in the hope her answer is satisfactory. She has a slightly sheepish quality, as if she's not quite sure she's at a career point to merit great attention. Overall, she is winningly unassuming.

"When I first read the script, it struck me as a very honest portrayal of what goes on in high school," she says. "I was struck that these are kids that normally don't get screen time. They are the kids who fall through the cracks.

"I went to a really large high school and graduated with 780 people," she continues. "It was a large high school with too many kids there. I failed English the last year and had to go to summer school. I think a lot of schools cater to very academic types or to the star athletes. If you didn't fall into that category, you were sort of just a number.

"A lot of kids go through really bad things in high school, but they don't have the skills to articulate them."

Unlike Anna, Weil had supportive and understanding parents. In fact, they came from an acting background.

"My father had a comedy troupe in London when I was really young, the Madhouse Troupe. And they toured around Europe so it was something I was naturally surrounded by, and I wanted to fall into it."

Her parents, Mark and Lisa, moved to Boston and then Pennsylvania. They performed in clubs and he later did freelance comedy writing. They would like to move to New York, Weil says, after they raise her younger sister.

"John Cleese invited my father to join up with Monty Python and co-write the Secret Policeman's Ball (a comedy-and-music concert, later released on film). My dad couldn't go because he couldn't find a cheap-enough flight.

"I sort of identified with Anna Stoddard's need to get out of suburbia and be in New York," she says. "And my parents were really great about it. Somehow they know it was the only thing that made me happy, so they allowed me to do that."

To get her part in "Whatever," Weil auditioned for Skoog three times. "Susan really had an understanding for human behavior," Weil says. "She knew adolescents don't really talk about things a lot of the time, and silence sort of speaks more than discussing things at great length.

"The thing that really struck me was the character of Anna," she says. "She really is this bounce-board and sort of just reacts to everything around her. She doesn't really say that much."

Much of "Whatever" was filmed in Wheeling, W. Va. "We were all living in this abandoned dorm house on this college campus, and the entire cast and crew were there," Weil says. "So it allowed us to develop these friendships we wouldn't normally have over a 27-day period."

Weil did have several difficult scenes - including one where Anna loses her virginity to a conceited boy who seduces her with his artistic pretensions.

"The virginity scene was pretty tough," she says. "I had never had to do a love scene before. That's the most intimate I've had to be ... on screen.

"I said to Susan, 'I'm really nervous, I think I'm going to laugh.' She said, 'That's all right.'

Weil has no new film lined up, although she has been sent several scripts to read. "I just want to continue to do good work," she says. "Wherever that puts me is fine, I guess."