“Listen Up Philip,” the third feature from writer-director Alex Ross Perry, has all the makings of an indie hit. The film deals with the many mishaps of Philip, a semi-successful writer living in New York City, played by Jason Schwartzman.

Creating a film like “Philip” is easier said than done. In an interview with WSN, Schwartzman and Perry talked about the creative choices behind their film.

Perry’s initial reasoning behind choosing “Listen Up Philip” as a follow-up to his film “The Color Wheel” had a lot to do with New York City.

“I realized I’d been wanting to do the New York movie for a while,” Perry said. “What was becoming clear was that my New York story was starting to be defined by a simultaneous achievement of all these goals that I’d had for a very long time. It felt very good.”

Writing “Philip” was a personal experience for Perry, an NYU alumnus who, like many students, found himself unhappy in a city, despite having so many opportunities.

“I was becoming absent from my home, from my friends and from every dynamic I had built for years,” Perry said. “To do a movie about somebody who, on the one hand, has everything they want and has wanted for a long time, and, on the other hand, part of that means moving around and being out of people’s lives and being absent, felt like the basis for the New York movie.”

When talking about Philip, Schwartzman spoke about how much he enjoyed playing a selfish character.

“He’s not passive-aggressive, he’s just aggressive,” Schwartzman said. “I don’t find him hard to like. I find that people probably have a hard time embracing somebody who’s very honest and outspoken because I think we’re at a point now in our society.”

The film shifts the spotlight from the titular protagonist throughout to Schwartzman’s co-stars Elizabeth Moss and Johnathan Pryce.

“You’re reading [the script] and you’re going, ‘This is going to be about this guy?’ and then all of a sudden it’s like, now we switch,” Schwartzman said. “It felt exciting and it was more like a literary structure. It was good that he used that structure for a movie about a writer.”

The film recently played at the 52nd New York Film Festival, which held significant sentiment for Schwartzman.

“[The festival] has a very significant appeal to me because it’s where ‘Rushmore’ first played,” Schwartzman said. “It’s a very emotional place where people first saw me in a movie. I think just being in New York, it’s special, especially for this movie. It’s the ultimate home for it.”

A version of this article appeared in the Thursday, Oct. 16 print edition. Email James Muntisov at [email protected].