SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY
(Production Notes)
SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY marks the
long-awaited return to the big screen of Peter Bogdanovich, one of the most
acclaimed filmmakers of his generation. After a twelve year absence, during
which time he directed three films for television, andthe Grammy-winning
documentary “Runnin’ Down A Dream: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers,” as well as
a completely revised and expanded version of his highly-praised documentary
“Directed by John Ford.” He also acted as a regular on “The Sopranos” and in
several features,and published two more booksabout the movies, including the
best-selling “Who The Hell’s In It.” With SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY,Bogdanovichreturns
to the comedy genre, at which he was so adept with his early classics, the critical
and box office hits “What’s Up, Doc?” and “Paper Moon,” as well as the cult
favorites, “They All Laughed” and “Noises Off.”
Like “They
All Laughed,” SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY was lovingly filmed entirely in his
hometown, New York,at its romantic best. Known for his exemplary work with
actors--from his award-winning breakout film “The Last Picture Show” to his
last feature “The Cat’s Meow”-- for SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY, Bogdanovichhas
assembled a stellar ensemble cast, headed by Owen Wilson, ImogenPoots, Jennifer
Aniston, Will Forte, Kathryn Hahn and Rhys Ifans, all working together at the
top of their form.
SHE’S FUNNY
THAT WAY is a classic style romantic comedy, with touches of the equally
classic screwball comedy, in the best sense of those words. Although completely
modern in its characters, situations, and settings, it’s a film that harkens
back to the landmarks of the genre from Hollywood’s heyday of the ‘30s and ‘40s,
with sparkling wit, charm, and sophistication amidst the craziest and zaniest
of premises and situations.
The film
centers around Isabella “Izzy”Patterson (Imogen Poots), a Brooklyn-born call
girl with aspirations to be an actress, who, during an assignation at the
Barclay Hotel in Manhattan with ArnoldAlbertson (Owen Wilson), a successful theatre
and film director about to do a new play on Broadway, is offered $30,000to do
something else with her life. As Arnold explains to her, there are those people
who go to the park and feed nuts to the squirrels. But why not sometimes feed
squirrels to the nuts? It turns out this isn’t the first time Arnold has said
that to a call girl. Isabella isn’t his first squirrel and `squirrels to the
nuts’ is a line that reverberates throughout the film to great comic effect.
Although Isabella is clearly
stunned, she accepts the offer.But when she does, it starts a chain of events
which also changes the lives of everyone she encounters: Arnold’s wife and star
of his play, Delta Simmons (Kathryn Hahn); Delta’s co-star Seth Gilbert (Rhys
Ifans), who is Arnold’s rival for Delta’s affections; the playwright Joshua
Fleet (Will Forte) who falls in love with Isabella; her therapist, Jane
(Jennifer Aniston), who turns out to be Joshua’s girlfriend; and the
distinguishedand esteemed Judge Pendergast(Austin Pendleton), a former client
of Isabella’s, who is obsessed with her. Added to the mix are Isabella’s
parents (Cybill Shepherd and Richard Lewis) and a mysterious detective (George
Morforgen),hired by the judge, andwho turns out to be the playwrightJoshua
Fleet’s father. By the end of the film, through a series of comedic encounters,
twists and turns, nothing is the same for any of them.
The story unfolds with a wraparound
structure, as Isabella sits with a cynical interviewer (Illeana Douglas), down
the block from Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles, and relates how she, a girl
from Brooklyn, working as a call girl, became a movie star. And through the
course of the interview we see how all of that happened, how her love of the
movies and her dreams of Hollywood, turned into a reality, just like some kind
of cock-eyed fairy tale.
Peter Bogdanovichand his now
ex-wife Louise Strattenoriginally conceived the story for the film, and wrote
the screenplay 15 years ago. At that time,Stratten was going to play the
Isabella Patterson role, now played by Imogen Poots, and John Ritter, the role
of Arnold, now played by Owen Wilson. But after John Ritter’s tragic and
untimely death, Bogdanovichand Strattendecided to put the script and project
aside for a while.
Years later, when Bogdanovich
became friends with Owen Wilson, he discussed the role of Arnold and the script
with Wilson while binge-watching “Breaking
Bad” and “Mad Men” at Wilson’s Malibu home, and then decided to resurrect the
project, with Wilson attached as Arnold. And so began SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY’s
journey to the big screen.
Stratten suggested that Bogdanovich
go to two friends of his, the acclaimed filmmakers Wes Anderson and Noah
Baumbach, and ask them to get involved as executive producers. “They read it,
and said they’d like to help me get it made,” recalls Bogdanovich. “They’re
both fans and I’m a fan of theirs. We’re all very friendly. They call me Pop, and
I call them my sons -- Son Noah and Son Wes. We’re very close and they were extremely
helpful in getting the picture off the ground. By having them aboard, we were able
to get Owen and Jennifer Aniston attached. Quentin Tarantino read the script a
long time ago when it was going to star John Ritter, and loved it then. So when
I called him during the filming and said, `Can you do this cameo?’ – I toldhim
what it was and he laughedand said, `Sure, I’ll do that. It would be a kick to
be in a Bogdanovich picture.’ And I said,`Well, can you do it day after
tomorrow?’”
Producers Holly Wiersma and Logan
Levy became involved with SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY when they were told about the
project by friendsChrista Campbell and LatiGrobman, who had heard about it from
friendsof Bogdanovich’s daughter, Antonia.
Wiersma and Levy heard that Bogdanovich was looking for someone to
produce and put the financing together for the movie,
“I read the script and liked it a
lot” says Holly Wiersma. “I’d always been a huge Peter Bogdanovich fan; I grew
up watching his movies. And I’m also a big fan of Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston,
who were already attached.”
“What I
particularly liked about the screenplay,” continues Wiersma, “is that it
reminded me of the classic, old-time Hollywood movies that you don’t see
anymore. I think the closest any filmmaker today comes to making movies like
that is Woody Allen. But otherwise, there just aren’t movies like that anymore.
They don’t get made; I don’t think they even get written. So the script for
SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY, with Owen and Jennifer attached, was very exciting to me.
Logan and I decided to come on board the
film as producers.”
How did Bogdanovich originally conceive
the project? “It started with two things,” Bogdanovich explains, “the title at
the time,‘Squirrels to the Nuts,’ which has now been changed, and the notion of
someone giving money to a hooker in order to help her stop being a hooker. I
did that a couple of times in Singapore when I was there directing ‘Saint Jack.’
During the casting and prep of that film, which starred Ben Gazarra as a small
time hustler and pimp in 1970s Singapore, who dreams of being a brothel owner,
we met with a number of working prostitutes for the film. I felt sorry for two
of them who I thought didn’t really want to do that kind of work and I gave
each of them some money to start turning their lives around. That was sort of
the impetus for the script,” continues Bogdanovich. “And I liked the phrase ‘squirrels
to the nuts,’ because I always liked the Lubitsch film that it comes from, ‘Cluny
Brown,’ Lubitsch’s last film. He’s one of myall time favorite directors.”
“And that’s how it started,”
recalls Bogdanovich. “Louise Stratten and I were talking about writing a script
together. It was a rather difficult time in our lives, so we decided to write a
comedy to cheer ourselves up.”
“We subsequently changed the
title,” continues Bogdanovich, “because during the production process, the
picture went from being more of a screwball comedy, with romantic overtones, to
being more of a romantic comedy, with screwball overtones. And so ‘Squirrels to the Nuts’ didn’t seem to
go with this particular version of the film. SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY, from a 1930s
song, seemed more appropriate. I’m partial to songs from the 30s in general.”
Owen Wilson was the first person
cast in the film. As Bogdanovich relates, “He’s one of the few actors today
who’s a movie star in the sense that he has a very appealing personality which
comes across in everything he does. I love talking with him, I love being his
friend. So I said, ‘Would you like to do this comedy?’ He read it and thought there
was a bit too much slapstick for him. So I took most of that out because the
slapstick had been written for John Ritter,whose specialty it was. Owen, on the
other hand, comes up with great lines. He ad-libbed quite a number of lines in
the picture that are very funny. Don’t forget, he started out as a writer on
Wes Anderson’s first three films.”
Both Bogdanovich and Wiersma
believe that Owen Wilson was the perfect actor for the role of Arnold and few
actors could have made the character come across so likeable or sympathetic. “I
think Owen Wilson has three things about him that make Arnold work,” explains
Wiersma. “Owen is the everyman; there’s that star quality that shines through;
and he’s likeable. There aren’t many actors who could play the role of Arnold
where at the end of the day you’d still like him. When we tested the movie, Owen was one of the
actors in the film who tested the highest. How many actors could pull that off?
Arnold is a guy who’s cheating on his wife and calling hookers on the
phonewhile his children are on the other line. He’s doing some things that most
people would view as despicable. Yet at the same time you never hate this guy,
it just never goes through your mind, which not many actors could have pulled
off.”
According
to Bogdanovich, “You forgive him because you like him. So you don’t hold it
against him. Owen also is very attractive, but he’s not threateningly
attractive like Errol Flynn or Cary Grant was. He’s more boyish. He’s not a
sexpot, so that helps too. You feel like he’s helping the women, not exploiting
them. He’s helping the women in his own way.”
When
Jennifer Aniston was approached to do the film, it was with the idea of her
playing the role of Delta, Arnold’s actress wife. But as Bogdanovich relates,
“She just had no interest in playing the wife, but said she’d love to play
Jane, the therapist. I tried to convince her that maybe the part of Delta was
more central to the story, but she had her heart set on playing Jane. So
finally I said, ‘Okay, play Jane.’
“And she’s
very good at it, she’s excellent in the part,” continues Bogdanovich. “She
wears a wig which she insisted upon for the role and which I liked. And
everything she did was fine with me. I think she did a great job. It was very
much a stretch for her with the performance. She’s never played anything quite
like that before. She basically played a complete bitch. And audiences laugh
when they see her in the part because they know she’s not like that. That’s one
of the reasons the dynamic works.”
In
addition, a lot of Aniston’s dialogue has a sped-up tempo as in classic
Hollywood comedies of the 30s. “It’s a comedy tempo to build a certain pace,”
explains Bogdanovich. “She’s good at that and we worked at it. I kept saying
‘faster.’ Joanna Lumley, who was one of the cameos in this, did a picture with
me called ‘The Cat’s Meow’ and when they interviewed her and she was asked,
‘How did Peter direct you?’ she replied, ‘Pedro? Mainly, he just said ‘Faster,
Darling.’
“Frank
Capra told me an interesting thing,” relates Bogdanovich, referring to the
legendary director: “He said he didn’t know why, but ‘films slow things down,’
so if you play something at a normal speed it’ll seem slow, but if you play it
at a somewhat faster than normal speed it’ll seem normal. Then if you really want to go faster than
that you’ve got to speed up. And he’s right, absolutely right. That’s maybe
because film is bigger than life.I remember when we did `What’s Up Doc?’ Barbra Streisand said, `Can we take a moment here?’
And I said, `There will be no moments in the entire picture.’”
“I think the reason Jennifer Aniston
works so well in the role of Jane is that it’s so different from anything she’s
ever done,” says Wiersma. “I think the closest would be `Horrible Bosses.’ But
I feel even with that she played a sexier role, whereas in SHE’S FUNNY THAT
WAY, she really went for it, with the wig, as well as her whole demeanor. She
said that `What’s Up Doc?’ was her favorite movie so when she got this script
it was one of those things she really wanted to do. She wanted to work with
Peter Bogdanovich and she knew Owen Wilson. She was the second person cast in
the film and she stayed with it and stuck with it for a year as the project was
put together for filming. And she was great to work with.”
“I’m really pleased with ImogenPoots
as ‘Isabella,’ says Bogdanovich. “She’s an extraordinary actress. And I’d never
seen her in anything before I met with her. There was a list of up-and-coming
girls that was given to me. I saw four of them in L.A., then came to New York
and Imogen heard that we wanted to see her. She was shooting a picture in
Atlanta and she flew up to see me. We met at the Palm Court at the Plaza Hotel,
a kind of old-fashioned place to meet, and within five minutes I knew she was
the girl. She didn’t audition, we just talked. She was quirky, just quirky as a
person, but not trying to be quirky. She wasn’t pretentious or putting on airs
or being cutesy pie – none of that. She was just being herself, but herself was
quirky. And I recognized that quickly. So after about 20 minutes I said, ‘Look,
I’m not supposed to do this, but when you leave here, just know you’ve got the part.
I’ll work out the details.’ So that was it.
“And she’s really good. She’s very,
very, very good. And she’s very original. She’s just herself, she’s not like
anybody. The Brooklyn accent was always in the script because the girl that the
character is slightly based on is a girl from Brooklyn who had that accent. So
I just told Imogen that she had to do a Brooklyn accent – and she worked hard
at it. She had a vocal coach; she took it seriously and did it very well,
particularly given that she’s British! But the British are superb actors,
generally speaking. They’re trained well, they have a culture and a tradition
which we don’t have and they’re just dynamite. And she’s one of them.
“I knew Imogen would bring a
genuine quality to the role of Isabella, very real, not actory,” says
Bogdanovich. “Her being quirky without trying to be quirky really works for the
character. And she’s enormously appealing and likeable. She’s also attractive
without being Ava Gardner. She’s just really attractive and looks different
every time you look at her. “And she does everything superbly. She’s a great
actress who dominates the screen. The camera likes her, as they used to say.
“I think it’s a tricky role to pull
off,” adds Bogdanovich, “but Imogen made it seem easy. She never gave me a hard
time. At one point in the film when she auditions for the play, they were
playing it sort of for comedy, and I said, ‘No, we have to play this audition
scene real.’ I told her she had to cry because audiences equate crying with
good acting. If you can cry, you must be a good actor. So I said, `We haven’t
got a lot of time, so cry.’ So she did it and was crying at the end of the
scene and did it very well. Then I came over to her and whispered, ‘It was very
good, darling, but you screwed up your face. I want you to cry and still be
attractive.’ And she said, `Jesus, Peter!’ And I told her ‘You can do it. Cry
with your eyes, don’t make faces. And she did it.”
“I think
what’s so interesting about Imogen is that there’s a toughness to her, but also
something about her that’s very fragile,” adds Wiersma.“She has both innocence
and toughness. And to have that combined is something you don’t see often. Most
actresses could do one of the two parts of her character’s story. But in the
movie you have to believe Isabella as both a movie star and a hooker. And that she
is from Brooklyn. And Imogen is beautiful, but not in a classic way. She’s so
interesting to watch. And she always kind of looks a little bit different from
scene to scene.”
Obviously, one of the things
Bogdanovich also had to consider was how ImogenPoots would play opposite Owen
Wilson. “They were great together,” says Bogdanovich. “They really liked each
other and worked very well together. And their chemistry shows on screen. But
Imogen worked well with everybody in the cast. She’s a pro. And everybody liked
her and got along with her. There really wasn’t any temperament on the picture
in front of the camera.”
As for the casting of Kathryn Hahn
as Arnold’s wife Delta and Will Forte as Joshua Fleet, the playwright, Bogdanovich
couldn’t be more pleased with having selected them for those roles. “I wasn’t
familiar with Kathryn Hahn’s work, but she’s a close friend of Jennifer’s,
“explains Bogdanovich. “And when Jennifer said she wanted to play Jane she
said, ‘I know who should play Delta: Kathryn Hahn.’ They both have the same
agent and manager. So I met with Kathryn, I liked her, saw some stuff she was
in and that was it.
“Kathryn Hahn was wonderful,” adds
Bogdanovich.“And I don’t think she’s ever looked as good in a picture. She said
it herself, she said, `I look good.’ And I said, `Well, you should. You’re
playing a leading lady, and you look like a leading lady.’ We shot her that
way. She’s very good. She has a natural flair for comedy and she’s very real.
And again, I didn’t have to direct her much. She had it. She played it much
more down to earth than like a prima donna. She played it like herself; she is
very down to earth.
“And I
thought she and Owen were really believable as a married couple; I was very
torn as to whether or not to break them up at the end,” says Bogdanovich.“They
worked well together. Theywere excellent playing off each other. Their relationship
came across as very warm and that helps the story too. They seem to get along
very well. You buy that they’re married. And the cab scene in which they’re
talking over each other worked so well, it was really perfect. And that was all
ad-libbed-- it was all Owen and Kathryn. They just did it and wonderfully so. I
didn’t even rehearse it. If you have really good actors you’re way ahead of the
game. I once said to Orson Welles, `I thought it was a pretty good picture, but
it wasn’t very well acted.’ And he roared, ‘How could it be a good picture if
it’s not well acted?! What else is there? Who cares about the camerawork, it’s
the acting.’ And he’s right, really.”
“We’re so
glad that Jennifer Aniston did a little bit of casting for us by recommending Kathryn
Hahn for the character of Delta,” says Wiersma. “We met with Kathryn and
thought she was perfect for the role. And she really is fabulous in the movie.
It’s funny, but although Kathryn’s done so many different roles in so many
movies for years, you’ve never seen her in a role like this. I feel, in a weird
way, this is probably the role she’s most like in real life. She’s so cool and
she’s so pretty. And she never gets to play pretty in movies. So it was fun to
see her in this and she was a joy to have on set. Everyone’s favorite.”
What did
Kathryn Hahn bring to the role of Delta? “I think what was great about Kathryn’s
performance is that she just played it very straight,” says Holly Wiersma.“She
didn’t try to play it as an over the top, dramatic actress. She played it like
everywoman. Lots of women you know have in some way been cheated on and she
never played it as the victim and yet also never played it as the cad. And I
thought that was really interesting.”
“With Will Forte, we had a number
of possibilities for that part,” recallsBogdanovich, “and I liked him best.
He’s kind of a leading man, pretty straight, easy going – and looks like a
playwright. He looks intelligent. Orson
Welles used to say, ‘It’s very hard to believe that an American actor is a
writer or an intellectual.’ That’s why we often cast English people to play
those kinds of parts. Orson, himself, looks like a man who thinks and reads.
But there aren’t that many. Cary Grant did, so he could play professors and doctors.
But it’s not common with American actors. I remember when Bob Redford made
‘Quiz Show’ he had to get two Englishmen to play the intellectual American Van
Doren father and son.
“Will Forte’s role is not really a
comedy part; it’s more of a straight role. And I thought he was very appealing.
He has a gentleness about him and there’s an intellectual part to him as well. You
believe that he could write a play. And he was just easy to work with, a joy.
None of the actors on this film were difficult to work with.”
“Will Forte is another person whom
Jennifer Aniston had recommended,” adds Wiersma. “She and he had worked
together on another independent film before us. She loved working with Will on
that film, so she told us about him and suggested him for the part of Joshua
Fleet. And when we met him, we thought he’d be perfect for the role and they
would be the perfect combination for the playwright and his therapist
girlfriend. He was just coming off `Nebraska’ and he was amazing. He’s a
writer, intelligent, a great straight man, the good guy.”
Rhys Ifans, who plays Seth Gilbert,
the actor who stars opposite Arnold’s wife Delta in the play, was:“One of the
last people we cast,” recalls Bogdanovich. “I think we cast him the day before
he appearedin the film. We had been thinking of using more of a romantic,
matinee-idol type.
But George Drakoulias, one of our producers,(who was also a
producer on my documentary about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) had worked
with Rhys on Noah Baumbach’s picture, ‘Greenberg,’ andsuggested him not as a
matinee-idol type, but more of a rock star type movie star. And when I met him
I thought he’d be terrific, and he worked the next day!”
“He was
superb in the role of Seth,” says Bogdanovich. “And he was wonderful to work
with. He loved the script, loved the part, and most importantly, understood it
completely. I didn’t have to direct him much, he just got it. The looks he
gives to Owen are absolutely perfect. He’s very witty in the part.”
“Austin
Pendleton I’ve wanted to work with again since we did ‘What’s Up, Doc?’ Bogdanovich
says enthusiastically. “We wrote the Judge for him and the detective for George
Morforgen. When we wrote it they were a bit younger, but we wrote it for them
and didn’t want to cast anybody else.
George has been a friend of mine since I was 18. We met at Shakespeare
in the Park, Joe Papp’s production of ‘Othello.’ We were both in it. I was a
spear carrier and George was the understudy for Iago. We worked together
numerous times and he’s also worked behind the camera with me. He was
co-producer with me on ‘Saint Jack,’ ‘They All Laughed’ and ‘Mask.’He acted in ‘They
All Laughed,’ too.”
Rounding out the cast in cameo
roles are Cybill Shepherd and Richard Lewis as Isabella’s parents,Nettie and
Al. Shepherd and Bogdanovich, of course, have known each other for many years
and worked on various films together, beginning with Shepherd’s film debut in
“The Last Picture Show.” Comedian/actor Lewis and Bogdanovich are longtime
friends, although this is the first time they’ve worked together. Both Shepherd
and Lewis really liked the script and eagerly joined the cast to work with
Bogdanovich and help get the film made.
Half-way into filming Bogdanovich
and the producers decided that instead of just using narration that the
audience would want to see Isabella (Imogen Poots) and what better way than to
use an interview as the device for the narration. A few years after the story
depicted in the film, Isabella had now moved to Hollywood, was on the verge of
making it and was giving her first interview. You come to figure out that the
narrator may be an unreliable one. While everyone was coming up with
ideas, Wiersma suggested Illeana Douglas whom she had worked with
previously. Peter had also acted with Illeana years ago. Peter said
yes and Illeana Douglas joined the cast.
“The story
of SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY is a bit complicated for me to explain,” says
Bogdanovich. “But basically, it’s about a girl who’s an escort and how she
evolves into being a movie star through a series of odd circumstances. That’s what it’s about. And all the people in
the movie are sort of involved in getting her to that place, inadvertently or
not. And it’s about the accidental nature of things. Things just happen to her
through a bunch of strange coincidences. Robert Graves, who’s my favorite
writer, said there were so many chains of coincidence in his life that he’d
come to think of them as a habit!”
Producer HollyWiersma
says that what she loves about the movie most is that it is a true “throwback
to old Hollywood.” The Hollywood she wishes she could have gotten to be apart
of.Wiersma says,“Peter Bogdanovich is paying homage to the Hollywood he knew
and all of icons that he worked with and spent time with over the years. There
is a scene in the movie where Isabella is talking about Audrey Hepburn and
quoting Audrey. Peter directed Audrey 33 years ago in `They All Laughed’ and
now he’s directing Imogen talking about Audrey.” In addition to Audrey, Isabella refers to
Marilyn Monroe, Lana Turner, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Bogart and Bacall.
Bacall was the first person to give Peter clearance to use her photo in the
film (less than 2 months before she died).
“And the
story is about a girl who is sitting with an interviewer and telling her about
incidents that occurred in New York a few years before and how she got to where
she is today,” explains Wiersma. “It’s kind of a classic rags to riches story.
As people say, it’s a small world. And in this movie, Isabella and all the
people she meets through unlikely encounters find their lives changed in the
process. Is it coincidence or is it fate?”
Although Bogdanovich is very pleased
with the way the film turned out, he admits that a lot of things changed in the
journey from script to screen. “One significant change,” relates Bogdanovich,
“is that it got less screwball. ButI kind of liked the idea of the Isabella
interviewbecause we did something similar in ‘Noises Off,’” continues Bogdanovich,
mentioning his well-received adaptation of the hit Broadway farce.“When we did
‘Noises Off,’ we needed something to tie it together, because the play it was
based on it didn’t have a good movie beginning or end. It was fine for the
theatre because you have curtain calls and people come out on stage so you see
they’re still alive, but not for the film. So we did a wrap-around and I
thought Michael Caine did it well and it helped the picture. With Imogen doing
it, the new picture just became warmer.”
The use of music has always been
integral to Bogdanovich’s films. “We tried
so many different types of music,” explains Bogdanovich, “but none of it was
quite right. Then, we finally decided to use a composer. We chose Ed Shearmur,
and he did a superb job. And it’s the first picture of mine that has a real
score all the way through, rather than primarily using records. I never did
that before. And I really think Ed did great work.He understood the picture. He
saw the picture, he liked the picture, he got what it needed, and he did a very
good job. We only used a couple of records, songs for the beginning and end of
the film”
There are also numerous cameos
sprinkled throughout SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY, including actors who have had
significant roles in previous Bogdanovich films, such as Tatum O’Neal, Colleen
Camp and Joanna Lumley. Michael Shannon and filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, both
of whom Bogdanovich knows, also make short appearances.
“The cameos in the film are really
terrific,” says Wiersma. “We were in New York and we wanted SHE’S FUNNY THAT
WAY to really be a New York movie, so it was great to call people the day of or
the day before and say, `Hey, come be in our movie. Help us sell New York.’
This is a movie about Broadway and famous people so we decided to use that to
our advantage and put fun people into the cameos, even if they don’t say
anything on screen. We started with Graydon Carter (editor of Vanity Fair) as
Owen Wilson’s limo driver, who’s one of the first people you see when we
flashback from Isabella’s interview to New York a few years earlier. With
Graydon, it doesn’t get any more New York than that. And then Owen Wilson walks
into the hotel and there’s a friend of mine, an actor who lives in California
and New York – Jake Hoffman, Dustin Hoffman’s son. We ran into him in the
Bowery and said, `Come, be in the movie.’ And then Owen Wilson walks to the
hotel desk and there’s the amazing artist and designer, Scott Campbell, who’s
walking by. And the one who is walking with him is Erin Heatherton, the
Victoria Secret supermodel. We wanted to open the first New York scene with
famous New York faces.
“And then
we used cameos again a couple of other times,” adds Wiersma.“We wanted all of
Arnold’s former squirrels to be recognizable: Anna O’Reilly, a gifted actress
whom I love and have known forever, found out she was going to be in New York
so we asked her to be the first ‘squirrel’ in the airport scene. Jennifer
Esposito, who lives in New York, is another ‘squirrel.’ Other cameos were Susan
Miller, who has the famous astrology website astrologyzone.com, who is in the
audience of the play, as well as Will Forte’s mother and Roger Friedman, the
reviewer. It was a fun touch to have all these cameos in the film.”
* * *
