arts & life
film

Inside

The Intern

Robert De Niro

gets the chance to

work with a pair of

Michigan natives in

The Intern.

60

September 17 • 2015

Jennifer Lovy

I Special to the Jewish News

hen you spend an
entire summer film-
ing a movie with
Robert De Niro, including a
12-hour day working on one
scene that takes place in a car, it
makes sense to refer to the icono-
clastic actor as Bob.
What doesn't make sense to
Michigan native and Hillel Day
School graduate Jason Orley is how
he ever managed to be one of the
actors sitting in that car with De
Niro filming The Intern, due in
theaters on Sept. 25.
Orley, 26, is not an actor. Or at
least he wasn't until last year. He's
a writer and New York University
film-school graduate with a screen-
play currently in production and
a script he's adapting from a novel
for Paramount.
The screenplay in production
is called Big Time Adolescence
and it is a comedy about a
16-year-old who gets corrupted
by his sister's ex-boyfriend. Orley
is currently casting and hopes
to begin filming in February. He
also will direct the movie.
"Acting with De Niro is just my
hobby:' Orley jokes.
The Intern also features Ann
Arbor-native Zack Pearlman,
who previously had regular roles
on MTV's The Inbetweeners and
Fox's Mulaney — but says that The
Intern is his biggest project yet (he
calls De Niro "Bob:' too).
The Intern stars Robert De
Niro as a widower who doesn't
know what to do in retirement,
so he applies for a senior (citizen)
internship at an online fashion site
started by a character played by
Anne Hathaway. The film features
a cadre of actors playing interns:

W

Pearlman plays the role of one who
De Niro's character takes under his
wing; Orley also is one of the new
interns. Others include Nat Wolff
(Paper Towns), who also is Jewish,
and Adam DeVine (Pitch Perfect
and Modern Family).
Although these two Jewish
Michiganders (now both living in
L.A.) didn't know each other before
auditioning for the movie, they
became fast friends with a mutual
respect for each other's work.
"We're both writers, we're both
from Michigan and we had a lot of
fun working together:' Orley says.
Pearlman, 27, adds, "It's just
wild that we grew up not so far
from each othet"
What's also wild is how both
Orley and Pearlman launched their
entertainment careers.
When Orley was in film school,
he had an internship for Nancy
Meyers, who wrote, produced
and directed The Intern. During
this college internship, he worked
as her assistant on the movie It's
Complicated (he was subsequently
director Jason Winer's assistant on
the movie Arthur, ABC's Modern
Family and NBC's 1600 Penn).
"I think subconsciously I was
kind of writing him:' Meyers says
of Orley. "I wasn't fully aware of it
until I emailed him one day and
said in the subject line 'can you
act?"'
So Orley sent his former boss
and mentor an audition tape. She
called him back the next day and
said "you might actually be good
at this," according to Orley.
When Orley first read the script,
he identified the young interns in
the film as similar to him when he
was an intern for Meyers.
"These characters were kids like
I was while working for Nancy
my sophomore year at NYU. I was
showing up to work with crazy