Brandon Judell
DON ROOS CREATES A HAPPY ENDING
By Brandon Judell
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| Director Don Roos, Lisa Kudrow and Steve Coogan on the set of "Happy Endings." Photo credit: Eric Lee |
Currently blond, gay and riding high, director/screenwriter Dan Roos' latest offering, Happy Endings, a Robert Altman-esque-populated comedy, has caused The Boston Phoenix to note that "fans of big-screen romance will not want to miss the bedroom clinches of Maggie Gyllenhaal and Tom Arnold, this year's most unlikely movie couple." Slant adds that "Roos's irony-free positivity about the human condition is touching and, at times, contagious." While FilmBlather.com adds: "Happy Endings is genuinely clever and very funny."
The reviewers of those venues also voiced some hesitations about Roos's comic look at emotional survival amongst the self-involved in Los Angeles, but to hell with that. The cast, including Lisa Kudrow, Laura Dern, David Sutcliffe, and Jesse Bradford, are all top notch, and the screenplay is deliciously entertaining.
One, of course, shouldn't expect less from Roos, whose track record includes teleplays for Hart to Hart and The Colbys, screenplays for Single White Female and Boys on the Side, plus the writing and direction of the viciously witty art-house hit, The Opposite of Sex.
The follow conversation with the upstate New York/Virginia-raised helmer took place at the Regency Hotel, while he was surrounded by two of his cast members, Bradford and Jason Ritter.
NYTW: "To birth or not to birth" is a repeating theme in this film.
Sperms banks and abortions or giving up a child for adoption all play a part
in Happy Endings. Were you planning from the beginning to comment on these
matters?
DR: It never occurred to me that it would be controversial. I never thought of the film as pro-life or pro-choice. I just think like the Lisa Kudrow character, who says that "Everything is a much bigger decision than we think."
The consequence of sex for straight people at least, the possibility of the bringing on of a new consciousness onto the planet, is a huge, huge consequence of a moment of pleasure. So this is a consequential decision. The decision to abort or have a child is a big one. [Add] the decision to have unsafe sex, and those are all big, big decisions. I don't think they're controversial. I just think everybody has an opinion about them, and they should. Everyone should have an opinion about things that are so important.
NYTW: Can you talk about the casting process?
DR: Yes. Gwyneth Paltrow was going to play the Maggie Gyllenhaal part, and she had to drop out for personal reasons. And then Jennifer Garner was going to play Maggie's part, and she had to drop out for scheduling reasons. And so Maggie kind of rescued us. She hadn't worked with me before, I hadn't worked with her, and she said, "Yeah, sure I'll do it." So we really all owe the film to the fact that she said, "Yes!" It was about three weeks before we started shooting,
These guys (nodding to Jason Ritter and Jesse Bradford) I think I never met before. I didn't even know of Jason. I knew of Jesse because as a gay man, you do rent Swimfan. I didn't know Jason. As riveting as he is, I was waiting for a film with him in Speedos. But these guys came in and read for me. As soon as I heard both of them, we stopped looking for that part. I mean we had no more auditions for [the roles of] Nicky and Otis after these guys came in.
That's great about auditioning. A lot of actors don't like to, but sometimes . . . Wow! It really helps me when they do.
NYTW: You mentioned in the production notes that Gyllenhaal gave a different spin to the freewheeling, spirited character of Jude than you had anticipated.
DR: Jude was sort of like the Cristina Ricci character in The Opposite of Sex, kind of a smart-alecky troublemaker as I envisioned her. Maggie, however, insisted that right from the beginning that her character show different sides and complexities. In her relationship with Otis, she was not just smart-alecky, she was actually interested in whether he was gay or not. She was actually trying to answer that question for him. She added a lot more depth to Jude, and I was really grateful.
NYTW: As an openly gay director, when you see treatments of homosexuals in other films, do you say, "Oh, that was conceived by a straight director or a straight screenwriter." Do you try to create a certain reality for your gay characters?
DR: Yeah. I do. You know if you're a female writer, then you're very interested in how female characters are portrayed, and if you're Afro-American, you're very concerned that it be an accurate portrayal [of blacks]. I don't think I want to do a politically correct portrayal of gay characters, but I do want them to feel real. Feel like people that I have known or might know in my life. So, yeah, it's important to me.
NYTW: Would you be willing to share the theme of Happy Endings?
DR: Oh, the theme of Happy Endings, really if I had to put it in a sentence, is that you can't achieve any kind of happiness until you face things about yourself and accept the truth about who you are and what you've done.[Judell]
Copyright © Brandon Judell 2005
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