Alex Wolff recognized himself in “The Line” — or rather, what any American man could be.
The actor leads writer/director Ethan Berger’s feature debut as a college scholarship student who tries to assimilate by joining a frat. The critically-acclaimed film is set in 2014 and spotlights an all-star cast including Austin Abrams, Lewis Pullman, Halle Bailey, Bo Mitchell, Denise Richards, John Malkovich, and Scoot McNairy. Late “Euphoria” star Angus Cloud, who died in 2023, also gives a standout performance in one of his final roles.
“The Line” subtly (and sometimes, not so subtly) captures the racism, misogyny, and entitlement that are paramount to college Greek life. But the script, which is co-written by Alex Russek, most poignantly emphasizes the frat brother-on-brother violence of hazing that mirrors the evolutionary masculine animalistic need to exert power in any way possible.
According to Wolff, that abuse of privilege is what makes “The Line” even more harrowingly resonant during an election year: Yes, the film centers on fictional college kids, but that depiction is part of a systemic issue across national institutions that then act as launchpads for industry leaders and politicians, much like “The Line” in turn was a launchpad for its ensemble cast of rising young actors.
Below, Wolff tells IndieWire about why “The Line” encapsulates America, how he worked to “identify” with the role of Tom, and why the “kids will be kids” excuse for college crimes will never make sense.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
I know this film has been years in the making, with you being instrumental in getting the script greenlit. How did you first become connected with co-writers Ethan Berger and Alex Russek?
Alex Wolff: I spent a few lunches with Alex and Ethan and the stories they told me were really harrowing and dark, and I was immediately interested in the whole world of fraternities and hazing. I was just naive. I didn’t go to college. I wasn’t in a fraternity. I had heard about it and had family [members] who were in fraternities. I’d just seen the terrible stories on the news of people like Timothy Piazza [who died as part of the Penn State fraternity hazing scandal], and then the sort of glamorized side of “Animal House.” I kind of had two extremes and didn’t really understand how one related to the other. What excited me about this movie was that it bridges the gap, it connects those two things. It shows you how it goes from “Animal House” to one of these tragedies in the blink of an eye. These kids just have too much power and too much of a chokehold on the colleges, and ultimately, it feels like [an embodiment of] America because a lot of [frat alums] unfortunately become very successful and wealthy. The most powerful people in the country came from fraternities and on some level were involved in some kind of hazing, whether they like to admit it or not.
And the thing is, I don’t blame the kids. I do on some level, but I think it’s much more about the institutions that enable them to have this kind of freedom. It just shouldn’t happen in schools. It just doesn’t make any sense to me at all.
Director Ethan Berger has spoken a lot about you being fully immersed in the character and doing your own field research by going to different fraternities and parties. Did you have to adjust your approach to playing Tom after being on the ground experiencing frats?
I realized I didn’t have a way into the character. I realized that I had lost my way in through all the research; I’d lost a connection to it because there were so many stories that made me so upset and sick. And when I went there, I think the first thing was seeing kids who were so hospitable and warm and baby-faced. I think I saw how young they are and I think that was the first time where I went, “Whoa, they’re fucking kids.” I had to approach things as an innocent. You can’t approach a character with any sense of your own morality. That’s just a fool’s errand and also disconnects you from different kinds of people. I think that that was the beauty of this: I got to identify in myself. I saw a lot of myself in aspects of them. It’s not something you want to admit; it’s not something you feel good about. But I think you have to kind of look into the eyes of these kids, and even if things don’t resonate with you, it might remind you of your cousin or it might remind you of your brother or your son. I think that was the thing was how close to me it is, how next-door it is. It didn’t feel like I landed on the moon when I got there.
They were all getting so excited about this one person’s party at a bar. And I was like, well, why is that?But then you realize, it’s because they’re young and this is exciting and they’ve given value to this. I had to approach it like one of those kids. I wanted to really focus on how impressionable they are. I really noticed how innocent they can be, and how they’re sort of desensitized to this kind of suffering.
I think that there’s a lot of internalized pain that that goes on with men. They do not metabolize some of the trauma they’ve endured, and I think that one of the ways that young men combat that is by inflicting pain on each other or inflicting pain on themselves. I think that a fraternity really encapsulates that, and hazing does too. There is some relief in collectively inflicting pain on someone else. I think you inflict pain on yourself because you want to show what a man you are in this antiquated idea of what it is to be a man. I think, for whatever reason, we’ve started to evaluate how masculine you are by how much pain you can endure. It really disgusted me.
“The Line” has been in development for years. You are 27 years old now. When you were doing this research, you were about the same age as the “kids” you’re referring to. How did you feel that distance or quantify it like that? They could be your peers…
That’s a really good question. I was like 19 or 20. I think when I first signed on to it, I was pushing them away and I said, “Well, I’m nothing like them.” And then I think a few years went by and you’re able to reflect more. It’s good that I’m not making the movie now because probably it would be too much. I think that [writer/director Ethan] caught us right in the sweet spot, all of us, because we’re now in our mid-twenties. It’s close enough that we can still feel it, that feeling of needing to be included and needing to feel embraced, and we also have some kind of perspective on it. It was really interesting because there’s a big difference between [ages] 23 and 18. There were a huge difference when I went there. I saw a difference. I think that that age is just really intense and painful, and there is an insecurity that just kind of wafts through the room when you’re around a group of 18, 19 year old men, especially in America. That ruffles feathers to even say that but it’s just the truth.
I want to say that clarify that saying they’re kids doesn’t mean that they don’t have responsibility. It just means that the problem goes deeper. The adults who allow them these freedoms are the ones that we really have to hold accountable in more serious ways, and it’s not recognized as a problem. The whole “kids will be kids” argument is a bullshit excuse because if kids will be kids, then why are you not managing them more? Why do they have so much power over colleges? Why are schools so concerned about their parents and their grandparents as donors? It’s a real chicken shit way around the issue.
Fraternities are a gross American tradition, in my opinion, and I think the movie exposes that in a real straight-ahead way and it doesn’t hit you over the head; it seduces you and then lets you down and I think that’s what I love about the movie.
“The Line” also has an incredible ensemble cast that also includes then-rising talents who are now viral stars, ranging from Lewis Pullman to Austin Abrams. The casting really feels so prescient. As the most established actor leading the film, what was it like working just with your more newcomer co-stars? Did you get the sense that this film would be a launching pad for their respective careers too?
I don’t think we thought about it in terms of that, but we knew it was special. You don’t always feel that way. I think a lot of times you just take a swing and you hope it’s good. But I think we felt like, we all really had the same vision of this thing, and we all really gave ourselves over to Ethan’s vision. Austin and Lewis are two of the best actors right now, and Angus Cloud was one of the best actors who’s ever lived. Every single day had the privilege of a lifetime getting to go toe-to-toe with some of the best actors ever. I just got really, really lucky. This was a movie where the luck was a big component.
What else was lucky about it?
I mean, every movie that gets made, especially at this level, is luck. But I think it’s luck that those actors were not busy. It’s luck that I got COVID the day after the movie ended. It’s luck that the film didn’t happen a few years before because I wouldn’t have had the same perspective, or a few years later because I would have had probably too much perspective and it maybe would have been too apologetic of a performance. The whole thing was sort of lucky and that I got to act with the beam of light that was Angus Cloud….That’s luck in and of itself.
Your sophomore directorial feature “If She Burns” is in pre-production. You’re also writing it and composing the score. What inspired the script?
The idea came to me during COVID and it was a way of processing pain. When we were all trapped inside, I think there was a desire to think about things outside of our little homes. I ended up writing this movie that was set in Europe and has things that maybe you wouldn’t see as connected to COVID, but then re-reading it, I was like, oh, yeah, they’re all trapped in a house and all the conflict is building in this house and it’s all about someone’s past, with people sitting and ruminating on the pain they’ve been through.
I just can’t wait to get started, but it’s really about a young woman, her crisis, and accepting of the pain and trauma she’s been through. I’m interested in movies about young people struggling with themselves. I haven’t made it yet, so I can’t say too much about it except that I have this amazing, unbelievable cast that is going to make what I wrote so much better.
I got really lucky with this, too. I mean, Justice [Smith] and Asa [Butterfield] and Victoria [Pedretti] are again, three of the heavy hitters of our generation. They’re also three deeply emotional people that I love and I just happen to be friends with them.
I know as an actor, you definitely emphasize indies, but you also have a few larger franchise films like “A Quiet Place: Day One” thrown in there too. Would you ever be tempted to give your voice and indie directorial take on a pre-existing IP?
Yeah. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see like a “Transformers” movie about a tea party where one Transformer says something that hurts the other Transformer’s feelings and they go off and they have a night where they’re both kind of like ruminating and they’re really mad? They’re in their giant metal cave and then it’s about the morning confrontation where they have to talk about it. But they just keep avoiding it and they keep talking about other things. So then they get like very snippy with each other, kind of like a Kenneth Lonergan movie about two Transformers.
I feel like you did not like that question, which is OK.
I love the question. I was pitching. Was it not a good idea? I am really stuck in this idea of Optimus Prime and Bumble Bee having a passive-aggressive argument.
I think it would be really interesting to see one of these huge movies that’s really about emotion. That’s why I loved about “A Quiet Place.” It’s just about her wanting to go get pizza. I would love if more movies had less characters but are more about emotional things. I’m joking about Transformers, but I really do think there could be these huge movies that are just as exciting. They could be about the little things and just be very focused. I love huge popcorn movies and I love car chases and fights, but I do feel like we could just pare them down and be about a few characters and seeing how they interact.
So “Transformers” meets “After Hours”?
Yes! Thank you, finally! “Manchester by the Sea” meets Optimus Prime.
“The Line” premieres in select theaters Friday, October 18 from Utopia, with an expansion to follow Friday, October 25.
