DeLeo first met Neal and his future girlfriend Rena (featured prominently in the film) when they worked at a health food store in Long Island, NY.  DeLeo and Neal were in their early twenties at the time.  DeLeo thought Neal would make a good subject for his first film, partly because "from the very day I first met him I felt he was the reincarnation of Franz Kafka... I used to tell him this years ago when we first met.  He was like 'what do you mean?' and then I would read him excerpts from Kafka's books and diaries, his letters to Felice (DeLeo has everything Kafka's ever written), the self-torture, and finally Neal started to understand.  Years before I met Neal, I always wanted to make a film about Kafka or at least write a book about him, so it worked out for me - I probably met Kafka, in a way, and now I get to make a movie about him set in modern times." 

The film shows Neal doing all sorts of strange things, including a clip of Neal giving himself a thorough aloe bath which was "probably the wierdest thing he did at the time, aside from going to the bathroom in the shed."  DeLeo did not necessarily know what he was getting into at first, as he had not met any of Neal's family before he started filming.  "When I proposed the idea to Neal, to do this film about his life, all I knew going in was that Neal was going to give me something.  Because Neal is one of these guys that, it's almost literary the way he speaks, the way his mind works and the way he expresses himself.  It's almost like it's written down already and he's just reciting it, and he has this way of talking that is very foreign to me... Then I met his mom, then I met Bob (Stoneman, the man who employs Neal as a caretaker), and all these amazing things they were saying just far exceeded my expectations."  DeLeo and Neal remain good friends, though "Neal frustrates me a lot in real life.  We fight a lot.  We're different people, yeah we're very close friends, but we're fundamentally different people - actually we're fundamentally the same but we express ourselves in a different way so you'll hear frustration in my voice sometimes when I speak to him (in the film)."  

DeLeo stated that he likes to explore the concept of unrequited love and rejection.  In Why Neal, the concept is explored through Neal's continued attempts to contact Jennifer, a girl he had a brief relationship with when he was a teenager.  "She didn't want to get involved," with the film, or with Neal.  "In her mind this was just a fancy ploy for Neal to have contact w/her.  I tried to explain to her what we were doing at the time.  I was a little nervous myself because I couldn't call myself a documentary filmmaker then, I was just going out there for the first time.  I had no credentials, I couldn't show her any magazine articles or anything like that. It didn't matter though.  I could've showed her anything, I probably could have offered her $10,000 and she wouldn't have done it.  She wanted nothing to do with Neal."  Still, DeLeo had to try - "I spoke to her, she's a nice girl, but I understand her decision completely.  Up to that point, he had just been writing her these crazy letters about a relationship that was 18 years old already... She was finished with that part of her life, so I had to respect that." Unfortunately Jen has not changed her mind to this day, but DeLeo has come to the conclusion that, "ultimately it's better that she's not in the film."

DeLeo feels that, when the film is ultimately distributed, his ideal audience would be "the same audience that enjoys films like Gummo, people in their twenties or thirties, hip people, the same kind of people who enjoy Richard Linklater movies... and anybody who's ever heard the word 'No' from the opposite sex - those people would probably enjoy this film."  DeLeo finished filming Why Neal five years ago, and now is preparing a final edit in anticipation of the 2005 film festival circuit.  He's had no experience with selling a film or dealing with the press, so he's gone about things a little differently than most.  "Neal and I go out together as a team, kind of like Laurel & Hardy... we knock on these doors, and these writers and publishers say 'Who the hell are you?  Where are you coming from?  That's not the protocol, knocking on doors."  But DeLeo states that everyone has been very kind to them, and they've found some receptive folks. 

Currently, DeLeo has two new projects in the works.  One a new study of Neal Hecker seven years later called Neal Now, which is secondary to the "next film I really want to produce, which is this documentary on these 2 girls - one girl is 18, and one girl is 20, and they're friends.  It's about their families and the dysfunctional situations that these 2 girls are in, they're college girls who are going to be roommates in a couple of months, it's really messed up, well, not messed up but just very chaotic, tragic stories each of these girls have.  One of these girls is an artist, they both go to fashion school, and they both have me running around New York City, upstate, and New Jersey filming them, it's just completely chaotic." 

DeLeo works as a full-time professional magician in the vein of David Blaine, "it's fun and I do very well."  Through his interest in magic, DeLeo became very good friends with the father of teenage Kimmie, the 18-year-old in his new film.  Kimmie's father, who used to work at a magic shop, died approximately 18 months ago.  "Her dad was her whole world.  Because she was an amateur magician too.  She has a lot of things to work out as a result of this and other events in her life."  The 20-year-old is named Shannon.  "I always wanted to make a teenage angst movie, not like John Hughes, but more sophisticated, and this project is satisfying that.  These girls remind me of the girls that I grew up with.  I grew up in Ozone Park in Queens, and Howard Beach - an area known for Italian cooking and a tough kind of neighborhood." 

The Neal Now project will feature a more mature Neal.  "Neal Now is more proactive, less confessional and more action.  It's about him putting a band together, getting a gallery show of his artwork and getting the girl - a very monumental task I must say."  Still, DeLeo does not head into the filming without many preconceptions of the finished product.  "These films are very difficult because, I have an idea, just a concept, and then I go and I start filming.  There's no time frame really.  The story unfolds, and the actual structure of the film becomes apparent as we go on."  "I just end up filming a lot...  I shot 200-300 hours for Why Neal and we cut it down to an hour and a half, which probably isn't the wisest way to film but..."  DeLeo lists the films of Woody Allen, Lars Von Trier, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorcese, and Ingmar Bergman as his major influences.  DeLeo truly respects his subjects, as they are his friends too.  "I'm showing all the scars and the ugliness, but at the same time I'm also not pointing finger at them.  I'm saying we all have these issues and we're all kind of linked."  Hopefully Chris DeLeo will find a distributor for Why Neal soon so that people can see those links for themselves.