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"FacebookPinterest\n\nJosh Radnor, star of How I Met Your Mother, has an active second career writing and directing movies about thirtysomething males feeling stuck. His first film, Happythankyoumoreplease, won the audience award at Sundance in 2010. Now he returns to Park City with a follow-up, Liberal Arts, about a lovesick New Yorker going back to college to celebrate a favorite professor's retirement. Here, he and co-star Elizabeth Olsen\u2014whose breakout film Martha Marcy May Marlene premiered at the festival last year\u2014talk about sophomore year at Sundance.\n\n\n\nGQ: Josh, you shot at Kenyon College\u2014your old stomping grounds. What was it like to be back on campus after 15 years? Did it make you feel old or invigorated?\n\n Josh Radnor: The only thing making me feel old would have been the Kenyon interns working on the movie. They were adorable, right?\n\nElizabeth Olsen: They were my age. I can't call them adorable.\n\nJosh Radnor: [laughing] I've never felt older than right now in this moment.\n\nGQ: What were your college days like? Were you out at parties all the time or were you reading on the quad?\n\n Josh Radnor: I got to Kenyon and I almost felt a little outclassed. Everyone was a bigger reader than I was. There were these guys on my hall who were big Updike and Raymond Carver fans. In college, you're kind of designing who you want to be. And I wanted to be a big reader. I got into a serious Philip Roth thing my senior year and my grades actually tanked because I was mostly reading Philip Roth and not what I was supposed to be reading. But I went out. I studied. I delayed writing papers. I was in college.\n\nGQ: Elizabeth, you studied acting at NYU. What were your college days like?\n\n Elizabeth Olsen: I had the best conservatory experience, and it couldn't be further from Josh's. While everyone was reading Updike in his classes, we were all BS-ing our academic classes so we could rehearse more Chekhov.\n\nGQ: Zac Efron has a funny cameo in your film as Nat, a wise stoner. Was that character based on someone you knew?\n\n Josh Radnor: No, but the name was. We had a guy on campus named Nat who had befriended this big drug guy. Nat looked much older than a college student. And after the drug guy got kicked out of school\u2014for trying to light the dorm carpet on fire\u2014Nat was suddenly gone. We started going, I think Nat was a NARC.\n\nGQ: That's funny. It's like 21 Jump Street. You cast Elizabeth Olsen before Martha Marcy May Marlene was released. Does that make you a casting genius or just lucky?\n\n Josh Radnor: I can reveal the secret. I turned 45 pages of my script into my agent and she called me. She said, \"I have your Zibby. Her name is Elizabeth Olsen. You won't want anyone else, I promise.\" Lizzie and I met and it was clear there was no one better for the part. But they're very different roles.\n\nGQ: Lizzie, you play a co-ed here, a girl in a comedy improv troupe. Was it a relief to do a lighter film on the heels of Martha Marcy, where you were in a cult?\n\n Elizabeth Olsen: It was absolutely necessary! I loved the syntax of the script. And I connected with the character\u2014with wanting to grow up fast. When I was 12, I thought I was 17. I've always been that way.\n\nGQ: Allison Janney plays a sexually aggressive professor. She's not an obvious choice. Josh, did you always think she was secretly hot?\n\n Josh Radnor: I've certainly had a huge talent crush and crush crush on her for years. And I knew she went to Kenyon. She's always trumpeted on the alumni board. It's always Paul Newman and Allison Janney are the people who went to Kenyon. She hadn't quite played this man-eater role before, and the idea of having her come back to campus excited me. This might be a little grand, but she's like playing a Stradivarius. Any note you ask for sounds great.\n\nGQ: What lessons did you learn from making your first film, Happythankyoumoreplease? \n\n Josh Radnor: I learned a lesson which I didn't heed: Don't put yourself in your movies. It's too much. There were days where I would wake up and think, Man, I'm totally in the mood to direct a movie today and I'm not in the mood to be in one. But this was such a personal story.\n\nGQ: This is the second trip to Sundance for both of you. Is the sophomore year easier?\n\n Elizabeth Olsen: I'm having so much more fun this year. Last year was fun, but I got sick. I was in my agent's bed and she'd give me apples and peanut butter.\n\nJosh Radnor: I feel both more relad and more nervous at the same time. I guess more relad because I've been here before and I kind of know the drill. But a little more nervous because I know the drill. We're not in competition, so that takes the pressure off. Now it's about the sale.\n\nGQ: Are you sweating that out?\n\n Josh Radnor: I think everyone is here. That's part of the deal. But you also don't want that to overshadow how nice it is to even be invited.\n\nGQ: Have you developed any Sundance rituals? \n\n Josh Radnor: I'm staying in the same condo I stayed in last time.\n\nElizabeth Olsen: I'm not.\n\nJosh Radnor: Are you mad about it? It's a downgrade? Is that what you're saying? Do you want me to talk to some people?\n\nElizabeth Olsen: [laughing] It's definitely bigger than my apartment in New York. It's like a snow globe here.\n\nGQ: How was the filmmaker brunch?\n\n Josh Radnor: We almost got stuck up at the mountain. The wheels on the bus wouldn't turn. Everyone had to get to the back of the bus to put the weight on the back wheels.\n\nGQ: This was a bus full of indie directors? Are you saying the future of indie film nearly careened off the road?\n\n Josh Radnor: There was a quarter-mile to go. We wanted to walk but they wouldn't let us. It was really intense. What's Sundance without a life threatening experience?\n\nGQ: Any Sundance survival tips?\n\n Elizabeth Olsen: Lots of moisturizer.\n\nJosh Radnor: Don't shake hands.\n\nGQ: Last thing: Seriously, how many more seasons will there be of How I Met Your Mother?\n\n Josh Radnor: Definitely one more after this. We're contracted through season eight. Our ratings are better than they've ever been. I think syndication really helped us. It's on in every country in the world five times a day.\n\nElizabeth Olsen: I've never watched it in the United States. I've only watched it in foreign countries.\n\nGQ: Why won't the writers just tell us who the mother is? I promise we'll keep watching.\n\n Josh Radnor: It's clearly just going to be some woman. It won't affect your enjoyment of the series. I think people don't like not knowing something. It could be anything. It's like, \"You can't know what's in this envelope.\" You have to tell me what's in that envelope!"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/sundance-film-festival-elizabeth-olsen-josh-radnor-how-i-met-your-mother-liberal-arts-interview>