From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

It's The Treatment.

I'm Elvis Mitchell. You can also hear the show at kCRW.com.

My guest, new director John Paul, is a film Charlie Bartlett, but we probably know him best as an editor.

He shaped films, many of which he did with director Jay Roach, two of the Austin Powers films, Mystery Alaska.

He was editor on one of the great films, lost films of the 80s, weeds.

But his new film actually, in some ways, reminds me a bit of weeds, Charlie Bartlett.

First of all, John, thanks so much for being here. Thank you for inviting me. Oh, no, my pleasure. Tell the audience

what Charlie Bartlett's about first, if you will. Charlie Bartlett is kind of an oddball love

letter to teenagers. It's about a kid named Charlie Bartlett, who gets expelled from a number of private schools and ends up going to the local

public school. He lives alone with his mom who's not completely there, but loves him. And through

a series of events, he ends up being prescribed, Ritalin and running in the street nearly naked,

and ends up sitting in the bathroom stall like a confessional.

He sits in one and the kids sit in the other one and he listens to their problems.

And he also then tricks, shrinks into giving him prescription drugs that he provides to the kids.

Eventually he realizes that's not the best way to use his talents, and he retires from the

prescription drug part of it, but continues being there as someone to listen to kids' problems,

and he's pretty good at it.

It's fascinating to me because I wondered how consciously you set out to make it feel like

a fairy tale.

Because at the very beginning, when we meet Charlie and his mother, and he's played by Anton Yeltsin and his mom is played by the wonderful Hope Davis, it feels almost like it could be a film that was set in the late 60s or the mid-60s even.

And then when it moves into the school, we see it's a modern day film. You write down to

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