The first thing you notice about Owen Kline is just how normal the director is. He’s in his early thirties, but he seems slightly younger. The image that comes to mind is that of a graduate student working on his Masters Degree or a PhD. Yet his knowledge of film and animation is
quite impressive to behold.

Not only is Kline quite intelligent and well-versed, he’s very nonchalant and laid-back in answering questions. Occasionally, his pet cat, a husky boy named Pepito, pops up every now and then for a quick cuddle. The image of a filmmaker with a cat perched on his lap is hardly
one that comes to mind. Definitely not pretentious or self-important by any means.

We’re speaking over a Zoom chat about Kline’s first film as a director. The subject of our conservation is the movie called Funny Pages. It is an indie comedy-drama flick about Robert (Daniel Zolghardi), an up-and-coming artist trying to write comic books for a living. Needless to say, as Murphy’s Law would attest, things don’t necessarily work out as planned.

Kline got his start in the entertainment business by appearing in bit parts. His parents are the couple Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates, who’ve been together for over thirty-five years. Kline’s film debut was alongside his younger sister Greta in the film The Anniversary Party. Both
siblings are party guests in the movie, which stars their parents as a married couple.

Another small yet memorable appearance is an uncredited bit part in Life as a House, the family drama about a dying architect who tears down his home in order to build another property while repairing the relationship with his son. Kevin Kline plays the father, while Owen
appears as the child version of Hayden Christensen’s troubled teen Sam during a flashback scene of the boy and his father swimming in the ocean. The circumstances for this was largely due to the family’s home movies. “I believe my mom had shot some footage of us at the beach while on vacation, and that ended up in the film,” Kline recalls. “It was pure happenstance that I appeared in the final cut.”

His big break happened in 2004 with the quirky Noah Baumbach dramedy The Squid and the Whale. The film concerns a changing family dynamic when academic couple Bernard and Joan Berkman, played by Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney respectively, decide to end their marriage amid personal conflicts (between the two of them) and professional jealousy (on Dad’s part). Jesse Eisenberg starred as insecure teenager Walt, while Kline played younger brother Frank, whose frequent cursing is one of the film’s running gags.

The family attempts to navigate the new status quo in the wake of the divorce. Eisenberg’s Walt has to deal with his father’s personal failings while struggling with teen angst, girl problems, and plagiarism at school. Despite playing a supporting role to Eisenberg, Daniels and Linney, it is Kline who carries some of the movie’s more emotionally-heavy moments, such as being left alone by his parents for long periods, trying to emulate his mother’s new boyfriend, and experimenting with underage drinking. The result is quite something to see: a
preteen child dealing with adolescent angst and coping with adult problems, and it is sad to watch the character struggling throughout the film.

Looking back on the film, Kline regards the experience fondly but insists he never set out to be an actor. Much like Life as a House, landing the role of Frank all came down to chance and timing. “My casting in The Squid and the Whale was really as a favour to Noah,” says Kline.
“He needed a kid to play Frank, and I just happened to be the right type.”

During the production, Kline came to enjoy the process of filmmaking and collaborating with Baumbach. He also took to observing the director’s setting up and preparing scenes. “It was really fascinating to see the process of a film take shape,” he recalls. “Almost like the pieces of a well-oiled unit coming together. It was sort of like shadowing a director, even though I wasn’t officially shadowing Noah at the time.”

Regarding his cast mates, he had nothing but good things to say. “Jeff was really great to work with,” Kline says of his onscreen father, Daniels. “He was so kind and supportive. Very patient.”

In an interview on The Squid and the Whale’s Criterion DVD release, he was also praising of Linney. “Laura was very mothering. It was just so interesting, because everyone was kind of playing their roles in real life,” he noted. “She was, you know, coming up with nicknames for
me and holding me. She was really sweet.”

What of Jesse Eisenberg? Kline has fond memories of The Social Network actor playing his onscreen brother at the start of his career. “I recall Jesse was so young then, 19 or 20 years old, but he was so focused in that role,” says Kline. “Very keen on his craft.” One of the film’s
notable scenes between the onscreen brothers crossed over from fiction into real life. “He actually taught me that Pink Floyd song in the movie- ‘Hey You’- on the guitar.”

Following the release of The Squid and the Whale, Kline ultimately chose to stop acting during his early teens in order to focus on schoolwork. “There’s a popular misconception that I didn’t want to act anymore, but that’s not the case,” he explains. “I only stopped acting because I didn’t want to be a child star.”

Would he consider returning to the world of acting full-time someday? Kline admits the thought has indeed passed his mind often. “I’ve always been interested in doing acting roles, and I’ve done a few in recent years. But it would have to be something interesting.”

As a teenager growing up in New York, Kline harboured the dream of becoming a cartoonist. His early efforts included drawing his own original comics, having them shrunk down via Xerox, and inserting them in between established comic strips. It was a very experimental approach for a Millennial developing his talent as a creator and artist. He also performed in novelty bands during his school days.

Unlike most kids, Kline was not interested in Marvel and DC superheroes while growing up. “That just wasn’t my thing,” he says. “I was more into stuff like Charles M. Schulz’ Peanuts, Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie, and Windsor McCay’s work.” Another favourite of his was the classic Warner Brothers’ Looney Tunes animated shorts from the 1930s and 1940s.

It was during this time that Kline first encountered the Safdie Brothers. Josh and Benny were a few years older than him, but they also shared a love of indie film. A chance encounter one of them with led Kline back into filmmaking- as a crew member. “Josh and I went out for a coffee, and I started working for them on a few projects,” he says. “And then I did return to acting in a short film they did called John’s Gone.”

“They’re both very, very intelligent guys,” Kline says of the Safdies. “I find them smart and well read. Both very interested in science and sports.” He notes the coincidence of Benny playing the role of theoretical physicist Edward Teller in Christopher Nolan’s epic film Oppenheimer. “Perhaps it’s just coincidence, but he also enjoys physics.”

While in college, Kline took up a job as an archivist and spent numerous hours working in the archives at the Anthology Film Archives. To some, this might seem a tedious, monotonous job, but Kline found it to be enjoyable. What he especially loved was sorting and viewing numbers of film collections. Another hobby was attending Film Forum and watching screenings of different filmmakers’ movies. “I really loved the experimental and avant-garde type films,” he explains. “They’re not the typical go-to films that people think about, but there’s something unique about them.”

In the 2010s, Kline branched out into directing. His first short film was the offbeat Fowl Play (2013), in which a gang of criminals attempt to buy a chicken for the purpose of competing in a cockfight. Next came Jazzy for Joe (2014), which concerns famed chat show host Joe Franklin finding an abandoned infant on his doorstep.

What shapes Kline’s early short films is how compellingly unconventional they are. Rather than going in a formulaic manner, these shorts both subvert and undermine narrative expectations that viewers might be predisposed to have. This is due to the director’s love of all things
unusual and quirky. “I like doing those kind of offbeat stories,” Kline states. “There’s something interesting about odd types of characters that you encounter in everyday life.”

Robert Bleichner made his debut in 2011, long before Funny Pages ever came to be in existence. Kline came up the character for “Robert in the Boiler Room”, a comic that he created. “I’d gotten the idea of a young artist living in a basement boiler room with a bunch of
old men and wondered why he would want to live there.” The story was published in the Whippers and Snappers comic book series.

From there, the thought of doing a film appealed to Kline. “Robert in the Boiler Room” is two pages in length, but it gave the creator an idea about expanding the premise. “I thought it would be interesting to do a feature on a cartoonist struggling to make it in the comics
industry,’ he explains. “As in, how did he end up living in a boiler room and why does he want to be an artist?”

Some would draw comparisons between Funny Pages and Kevin Smith’s indie comedy hit “Clerks”, which also depicted a slice of life in characters trying to make a living in New Jersey. However, that is where the similarities stop. “My film is meant to be an absurdist piece and not a standard coming-of-age drama,” he says.

Funny Pages is indeed a comedy-drama and a heartfelt examination of artistic struggle. After the death of his high school teacher, budding comic book artist Robert decides to pursue a writing career and opts not to attend college. He leaves his middle class family life and moves
into a basement apartment. Robert’s primary goal is to gain a mentor in Wallace, a once popular comics colourist, but the older man proves to be a troubled type who has a temper. What follows is a surreal, absurd odyssey involving unusual characters, a robbery, a case of
grand theft auto, and a no-holds barred beatdown.

Is the film autobiographical? Certainly, on the surface, there are a few similarities here and there, but Kline is adamant that the onscreen character is not him. “While there are some similarities to me, the character of Robert is a fictional one. I certainly didn’t drop out of school
or get into any wild misadventures like Robert does in the film.”

Writing the film proved to be quite a task in itself. By his own admission, Kline estimates he did a first draft of the script a decade before filming ever took place, and it took six years to get the movie made. Another challenge was drumming up interest in the project, which a number of people passed on. Even the surname Kline did not open a lot of doors for him in Hollywood. “I pitched that script to a lot of people who turned it down,” Kline recalls. “It was the standard ‘We’ll get back to you’ response but never calling.”

Ultimately, it was the Safdie Brothers who came on board as producers and helped get Funny Pages made. The film was sold to distribution company A24. “Not only were they supportive, they understood the script and helped find backing,” says Kline. “They are very much into the things I’m passionate about, and they love what they do.”

While some would consider delays as tedious and infuriating, Kline cites the long development period as being a productive one for a writer and director. Then came the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 to 2022. What should have been a quick finish lead to waiting, more
rewriting, more waiting, and editing. “After four years, I ended up editing down the script, writing forty-odd new pages of material and conducted a number of reshoots,” he says. “It was very tight.”

Funny Pages was released in 2022 to critical acclaim. It premiered at that year’s Cannes Film Festival in the Directors’ Fortnight- Feature Films category and earned a nomination for the Golden Camera Award. Later that year, the film opened theatrically in August to mostly positive reviews. In addition, it was listed by the National Board of Review as one of the Top Ten Independent Films of 2022, and Kilne received a Breakthrough Director Award nomination at the Gotham Awards. Not a bad way to start one’s career as a filmmaker.

Perhaps the most amazing moment for Kline was Funny Pages’ inclusion at the Cannes Film Festival. “I was almost in awe that we got to screen the film at Cannes,” he says, reflecting on that whirlwind spring and summer. “Even though it wasn’t in the main competition, being in the Directors’ Fortnight category was pretty special in and of itself.”

So what’s in the pipeline for Owen Kline? “I’m currently working on another script, but that’s all I can say at this point,” he says with the hint of a mischievous smile. Needless to say, the project is still under wraps for the time being, but it’s a given that the world will be watching what Kline will do next