Tagline: It’s a wonderful afterlife.
Just Like Heaven movie storyline. When David (Mark Ruffalo) rented his quaint San Francisco apartment, the last thing he expected-or wanted-was a roommate. He had only begun to make a complete mess of the place when a pretty but decidedly controlling young woman named Elizabeth (Reese Witherspoon) suddenly shows up, adamantly insisting the apartment is hers.
David assumes there’s been a giant misunderstanding… until Elizabeth disappears as mysteriously as she appeared. Changing the locks does nothing to deter Elizabeth, who begins to appear and disappear at will-mostly to rebuke David for his personal living habits in her apartment.
Convinced she is a ghost, David tries to help Elizabeth cross over to the “other side.” But while Elizabeth has discovered she does have a distinctly ethereal quality-she can walk through walls-she is equally convinced that she is somehow still alive and isn’t crossing over anywhere.
As Elizabeth and David search for the truth about who Elizabeth is and how she came to be in her present state, their relationship deepens into love. They have very little time before their prospects for a future together fade away.
The story of “Just Like Heaven” began on the pages of a bestselling novel called If Only It Were True, which was the debut book from French novelist Marc Levy. The romantic tale of love across the boundaries of our physical and metaphysical worlds first came to the attention of producers Laurie MacDonald and Walter F. Parkes several months before the novel was published in English.
About the Production
Laurie MacDonald reveals, “Unfortunately, neither one of us reads French, so we could only go by the synopsis at first. Even from that, we thought the setup of the characters and the story would work wonderfully on the screen.”
Eventually, however, the producers received early galleys of the English translation of the book, which only confirmed their initial impressions. Walter Parkes notes, “There was something so charming and touching about the basic premise. It seemed accessible and romantic and potentially very funny, so we bought the rights and began developing the movie.”
While MacDonald and Parkes have produced a number of films that involve both romance and comedy, Parkes acknowledges, “This is, in fact, the first pure romantic comedy that Laurie and I have ever produced. There is something elegant about a great romantic comedy script. It requires no big special effects or huge production values; the delight is in a well-told story about two people you really care about. In its simplicity, it can elicit the same kind of emotional, even visceral, reaction from the audience as those big movies do…sometimes more so. In a good romantic comedy, the audience has to care about these people almost from the first moment you meet them and, hopefully, to feel more and more invested in them as the story unfolds.”
“To me the best kind of romantic movies are the ones that catch you off guard,” MacDonald adds. “I think this story does that. It’s very funny, but there are key moments when the characters touch on deeper issues, so it’s very moving, too.”
Even before they had a final screenplay, MacDonald and Parkes approached the director they thought would be perfect to helm the project: Mark Waters. “Mark Waters is someone whose career Laurie and I have been following since his first movie, a small film called `The House of Yes,’ which could not have been more stylish or more intelligent,” Parkes states. Then I saw `Freaky Friday,’ which had this modern breezy style that made it much more sophisticated than one might have expected it to be. It completely delivered on a pure comedic fantasy level. And when you see `Mean Girls,’ it’s again funny, but not in any kind of forced way…just letting the real comedy of the situation play out. Those two pictures told us that Mark was the right director, and we are very lucky that he decided to come aboard.”
“Mark is a very skilled director,” MacDonald affirms, “and it seemed like a great opportunity to use his comic gifts. He immediately responded to the concept of the movie.”
Mark Waters offers, “What makes a romantic comedy work is a good obstacle, and I thought this story had one of the best obstacles ever-where one person is living in the physical world and the other is apparently dead…or so they think. They cannot even touch, yet they have chemistry.
Screenwriters Peter Tolan and Leslie Dixon, the latter of whom had previously collaborated with Waters on “Freaky Friday,” worked with the director and producers to develop Marc Levy’s novel into the screenplay titled “Just Like Heaven.”
Waters remarks, “Peter Tolan and Leslie Dixon took the juicy concepts and story ideas from the book and fleshed them out into a really funny, compelling, romantic screenplay. During filming, Marc Levy visited the set and was very pleased with the script. In fact, he said he wished he had thought of some of the original ideas that we incorporated in movie when he was writing his novel.”
The director reveals that one of those ideas added a different dimension to the relationship between the main characters of Elizabeth, played by Reese Witherspoon, and David, played by Mark Ruffalo. “One of the most interesting motifs created for the screenplay was that Mark Ruffalo’s character, David, would be a widower and still deeply depressed about the loss of his wife. So even though Elizabeth is the one who appears to be dead, David is the one who needs to come back to life.”
Waters calls the casting of Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo “one of those serendipitous situations. I was given a list of about 50 names to be considered for the two leads. I picked my top six and numbered them in order, and Reese and Mark were my number ones in each column. Later-it was the first time I sat down to lunch with both of them-I just had this feeling that it was meant to be, and I ended up being proven right; they worked perfectly together. But from the start, they were our first choice for both roles.”
Witherspoon says there was “a little bit of fate” involved in her being cast as Elizabeth in “Just Like Heaven.” “I had just moved about the same time that I signed on to do the film. I was unpacking and putting books up on the bookshelf and found the book If Only It Were True. I’d actually bought it a long time ago and remember thinking when I read it that it would make a good movie, so I guess it was meant to be.”
She adds that one of the things that drew her to the project was the theme of finding balance in your life. “You can be very successful and achieve many things in your chosen profession, but it is equally important to nurture your spirit and have a life. My character, Elizabeth, is a very hardworking, dedicated professional who is completely consumed with her job as an ER doctor. She has no room in her life for any kind of relationship; she just doesn’t make time for one. Through the course of the story, she comes around to the idea that you have to take care of your personal life as well as your professional life. There has to be a balance, and I think that’s a problem to which many people can relate.”
Parkes agrees. “Elizabeth is a doctor in a major San Francisco hospital…brilliant, but a workaholic. I think the character is defined by something we are all probably a little bit guilty of: she has sacrificed everything-relationships, relaxation and the joy of living in the moment-for this idea of what is waiting around the corner. But, as fate would have it, the very evening she achieves the things she’s been so ambitiously working for, her life is virtually taken from her. Reese had a tremendous understanding of the character and she was also extremely cognizant of how her role fit into the story as a whole. She was more of a collaborator than just an actress playing a part.”
“I had a great time finding this character with the producers and Mark Waters,” Witherspoon states. “He is a very detail-oriented director-he knows exactly what he wants and is one of the most prepared people I’ve ever worked with. It was really nice to work with someone who is so professional; it makes you feel really safe and comfortable. He is also very funny and was constantly coming up with fresh ideas.”
Waters had equal praise for his leading lady, noting, “Reese is obviously very pretty, but she is also extremely smart. She is charming and funny and has this crackling wit, so she is able to deliver fast-paced romantic comedy dialogue and make it snap the way it should. She just possesses this naturally endearing quality that makes her seem immediately accessible right through the lens. You look at her and you can’t help but fall in love with her-both men and women-and that’s why she is who she is.”
Mark Ruffalo was cast opposite Witherspoon in the role of David, whose life and home Elizabeth invades, unannounced, uninvited and unexplained. Laurie MacDonald says that the nature of the story of “Just Like Heaven” made the casting of the male lead especially important. “Romantic comedies are usually aimed at young women-they are traditionally the primary audience-so the female lead normally becomes the anchor of the movie. What I really liked about this movie was that the male role was of comparable weight and was just as funny. Having two equal sides to the story makes it more appealing. There is also a kind of mystery to David that makes his character very compelling.”
Mark Ruffalo comments, “David has a little bit of an edge to him, which I think is interesting to see in a romantic comedy. He starts out obviously depressed and anti-social. He sublets this great apartment, and all he wants is to be left alone, but all of a sudden he starts seeing this girl who insists the apartment is hers. He thinks he’s losing his mind, but then it becomes a question of how does he get rid of her. She’s annoying as hell,” he laughs.
Parkes states, “There is such an intensity to Mark. The amazing thing about him is you never feel that he is acting, which, of course, is the hallmark of a great actor. What most people don’t know is he is actually very funny. He has an absolutely fantastic sense of timing, with this deadpan take that is hilarious. He has great comic instincts, and over the weeks of filming, Mark Waters trusted those instincts more and more.”
“He’s going to surprise a lot of people, particularly with his physical comedy,” Waters affirms. “There is a scene where Elizabeth is trying to stop David from having a drink, and it’s all Mark acting like he’s being controlled by someone else. It’s great physical comedy from a guy who is considered a serious dramatic actor.”
Acting opposite a character no one else can see created specific challenges for Ruffalo, just as playing a character who was not of this world produced a different set of challenges for Witherspoon. Scenes involving the two of them-which is almost every scene in the movie-had to be shot twice, once with Witherspoon and once without her, so in editing, Waters could switch back and forth between David’s perspective and the point of view of those unaware of Elizabeth’s presence.
For the takes in which Ruffalo had to act with an absent Witherspoon, he says, “I really had to remember what she was doing in the scene, and where, but after a while, I knew her height and her proximity and where her eyeline was, so I could play to her without her actually being there. Another thing that helped was I had an `earwig,’ so when she was offstage, she could say her lines and I could really be responding to her.”
“There was an interesting dynamic to the scenes where I would be talking to Mark Ruffalo, and no one else could hear me,” Witherspoon adds. “Initially, it was confusing, but we got it down to such a rhythm that we could say pages of dialogue with him just repeating verbatim what I was saying. Actually, he cheated,” she teases. “I had to learn all my lines, and he got to just say them after me. Really, we had a good time developing that dynamic.”
Waters allows that having a non-corporeal central character lends itself to certain inconsistencies with regard to her relationship to the physical world. To counter that, he applied specific parameters for Elizabeth’s existence. “I had these rules that had more to do with David’s perspective. Like she could walk on the floor or sit in a car because, in his mind, that’s what human beings do. It’s a theatrical conceit, but we felt if we were internally consistent, the audience could accept that that’s just how things work. So she would never fall through the floor to the center of the Earth, but she couldn’t intentionally touch or pick up anything, which is tough for an actress. People are used to being able to go into a room and put their arm on a table.”
On the contrary, Witherspoon jokes, “It was actually good because I’m terrible with props. I end up with them in the wrong scene and never know what to do with them. So this was a perfect role for me because I could never carry anything, I couldn’t touch anything, and I couldn’t ruin anything,” she laughs.
In some ways, the challenges of playing scenes with an unseen character were harder on the actors who had to remain completely oblivious to Elizabeth’s presence even when Witherspoon was acting in plain sight.
Donal Logue, who plays David’s best friend, Jack, admits, “There were times I caught myself looking over at her, and I’d have to remind myself that I’m not supposed to hear her or see her. It was more distracting than I thought it would be.”
Mark Waters remarks, “Donal is a terrific comic foil in the movie. His character acts as a sounding board for David because he happens to be a psychiatrist, as well as his friend. But with Jack, we didn’t want your typical academic psychiatrist. He is a boisterous, larger-than-life character-a hard-drinking, womanizing, funny guy…who also happens to be a psychiatrist.”
“Like a lot of psychiatrists, Jack is probably a little `off’ himself,” Logue offers. “It’s kind of a `physician heal thyself’ situation. He’s a bit of a Lothario, always hanging with the younger chicks. Jack wants to help his best friend, David, get over the loss of his wife, so he keeps trying to reintegrate him into the dating scene. But now Jack has started to notice that David’s behavior is becoming increasingly more insane.”
Waters says, “The great thing about Donal is he is this Harvard-educated, very smart writer, director and actor. At the same time, there is this rowdy, Irish, Hell’s Kitchen guy lurking there, too. He has both sides to him, as does his character, so it was a perfect match.”
While Jack has been trying to get David out of the house to meet women, Elizabeth’s sister, Abby, had been working equally hard to get her sister out of hospital scrubs to meet men-that is, until a terrible accident took her sister out of circulation altogether. Dina Waters, who happens to be Mark Waters’ real-life wife, was cast in the role of Abby, although the director says he thought it best to remove himself from that particular casting process. “I felt it would be an obvious conflict of interest, so I let Walter and Laurie decide who was going to be cast as Abby.”
Parkes recalls, “Dina read for the role and she was just hilarious. I remember talking with Mark afterwards and saying how good she was and, at the time, I had no idea she was his wife. I think he thought I was being coy or something, but it was true. We did put several other actresses on tape, but the natural grasp of the character that Dina had from the very first scene she read persuaded Laurie and me that she should play the role.”
Dina Waters notes, “I play Elizabeth’s sister, Abby, who is sort of the yin to Elizabeth’s yang. Elizabeth is a very driven, structured doctor, and Abby is her wild and kooky older sister. Even though Abby is the one with a husband and kids, she is still a bit of a hippie. Still, when David tries to convince Abby that Elizabeth is with him in her house, Abby is very skeptical, to say the least-as I think most people would be-and it manifests in a very funny way.”
Parkes expounds, “David comes to tell Abby that Elizabeth is alive and tries to convince her that her sister is standing right there in the room with them. Normally, that would be a heart-tugging scene and you’re waiting for this melodramatic reaction…before Abby chases him out of the house with a meat cleaver to protect her children from this crazy person. It was great.”
In fact, there is only one person who believes David, and for good reason. Looking for answers, David visits a bookstore that specializes in the supernatural and there he meets Darryl, who, at first glance, would appear to be an unlikely source of help. Blessed with what he calls “the gift,” Darryl can sense Elizabeth’s presence, although he cannot actually see or hear her. Laurie MacDonald observes, “Darryl is a key character in the plot. Obviously, when you are faced with the reality of a spirit living in your apartment, and until then you didn’t believe in such things, but there has been enough evidence that you can’t explain it any other way except that you might be going insane, which you don’t want to admit might be happening… Well, if you lived in San Francisco, you’d go to an occult bookstore, wouldn’t you? This one happens to be run by Darryl, who provides a very important clue about who and what Elizabeth is.”
Following up his film debut in the title role of “Napoleon Dynamite,” Jon Heder appears as Darryl in “Just Like Heaven.” “They sent me the script and I thought it was a really nice romantic comedy with a great spirit about it, no pun intended,” Heder says. “I thought Darryl would be a fun character to play. He is the only one who believes David, because Darryl can sense Elizabeth. He can’t see her or hear her, but he knows what she is feeling. He knows they are stuck in this weird relationship and he helps define it along the way. He’s very cool about it. If he senses a spirit, he treats it naturally, like it’s nothing new. It’s just routine for him.”
“Darryl ends up illuminating things about David and Elizabeth that they couldn’t see themselves,” Waters states. “Jon has that laid back cadence that was perfect for the part. That’s not acting; that’s the way he talks. He was great. I think he steals every scene he’s in.”
Rounding out the main cast are Ben Shenkman as Dr. Brett Rushton, who saw Elizabeth as his competition for the attending physician post at the hospital; and Ivana Milicevic as David’s neighbor Katrina, who would see Elizabeth as her competition for David’s attention…if she could see Elizabeth at all.
Shenkman says, “I play a doctor who was a professional rival of Elizabeth’s. Now Brett has the job that Elizabeth had been given before her accident, and all he can do is revel in the success that should have been hers. Ironically, her fate ends up being in his hands.”
Milicevic comments, “Katrina lives in the apartment under David and thinks she might have a chance with him. She hears him walking around upstairs and wonders if he might be lonely, but has no idea that he is not alone.”
Behind the cameras, “Just Like Heaven” reunited Mark Waters with several members of his creative teams from past movies, including: director of photography Daryn Okada, who worked with the director on “Mean Girls”; production designer Cary White, who marked his fourth collaboration with Waters following “Freaky Friday,” “Mean Girls,” and “Warning: Parental Advisory” for VH1; and editor Bruce Green, who edited “Freaky Friday.”
Costume designer Sophie De Rakoff was working with Waters for the first time on “Just Like Heaven,” although she had costumed Reese Witherspoon for both “Legally Blonde” films and “Sweet Home Alabama.” In addition, composer Rolfe Kent knew the director and his leading lady well, having composed the scores for Waters’ “The House of Yes,” “Freaky Friday” and “Mean Girls,” as well as the Reese Witherspoon movies “Election,” “Legally Blonde” and “Legally Blonde 2.”
Both the book If Only It Were True and the movie “Just Like Heaven” are set in San Francisco, which is a city known and loved by director Mark Waters. “I lived there for about five years, so I had my own favorite haunts that I was able to incorporate into the script,” he says. “It ended up being a lot of fun because I was able to revisit some of my old stomping grounds in San Francisco and, at the same time, find beautiful locations for the movie.”
Screenwriter Leslie Dixon, herself a native of San Francisco, also helped with the location scouting in her hometown. Dixon had written a detailed description of Elizabeth’s apartment in the script. When Mark Waters was having trouble finding a locale that matched her specifications, Dixon directed him to the corner of Mason and Green-which just happened to be her old address. Naturally, the building fit the bill and was used for exteriors of the apartment building “shared” by David and Elizabeth.
The connection to San Francisco was also shared by producers Laurie MacDonald and Walter Parkes. MacDonald offers, “Both Walter and I lived in San Francisco at different times long before we were married, so we felt a real connection to the city. It’s visually stunning-the way the fog would roll in and the lights in the mist…there’s an air of mystery to it. There is something about that city that makes you believe that if spirits exist, they would want to live there.”
Waters concludes, “I believe in all sorts of spiritual things. To paraphrase William Shakespeare, `There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.’ That kind of sums it up for me. There are all kinds of phenomena that can’t be explained through science. The only thing they require is a bit of faith.”
Just Like Heaven (2005)
Directed by: Mark Waters
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Mark Ruffalo, Donal Logue, Dina Spybey-Waters, Ben Shenkman, Jon Heder, Ivana Milicevic, Caroline Aaron, Rosalind Chao, Ron Canada, Shulie Cowen
Screenplay by: Ron Bass, Peter Tolan and Leslie Dixon
Production Design by: Cary White
Cinematography by: Daryn Okada
Film Editing by: Bruce Green
Costume Design by: Sophie De Rakoff
Set Decoration by: Barbara Haberecht
Art Direction by: Maria L. Baker
Music by: Rolfe Kent
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content.
Distributed by: DreamWorks Pictures
Release Date: September 16, 2005
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