Finding LOVE: About the Origins of the Film
Love in the 21st century is rarely straightforward. On the contrary, it tends to be messy, complicated and filled with comical obstructions and impediments that sometimes make it a wonder that it happens at all. Screenwriter Colin Patrick Lynch wrote a romantic comedy that reflects the long and winding road that so many people must careen down to find connection in today’s chaotic world.
Lynch follows Oliver and Emily over a seven year period – from young adulthood to the cusp of their 30s — constantly moving from place to place, shifting careers, changing partners and even re-defining their dreams as they begin to figure out what life is really about. All the while, they are each searching for true love – searching everywhere that is except the one place they might find it: standing right in front of them again and again in the form of an old friend.
Lynch, a Los Angeles based playwright who had yet to have a feature film produced, turned to an old college friend, producer Kevin Messick, who read his script and fell in love with it. “I thought Colin’s script had such a realistic way of tackling the chaos and messiness of contemporary relationships,” he says. Messick was determined to get Lynch’s debut project off the ground.
When director Nigel Cole read the screenplay he was quickly seduced. Cole saw the story as an opportunity to take a fresh look at the traditional screwball romance – focusing on how two people finally come together in a world that seems to keep yanking them in opposite directions.
“I had been looking for a romantic comedy to do for ages, and I was almost despairing until I was sent this script,” recalls Cole. “What excited me about it is that it reminded me of the great old-fashioned romantic comedies I’ve always been enamored with, but it had a very contemporary sensibility. I like that it’s a tale about real people you recognize in a real type of love that is as blind, unpredictable and out of control as real love, much to our chagrin, almost always is.”
A rising new talent in mainstream comedy, Cole had already had directed two back-to-back sleeper hit comedies about middle-aged women breaking out of their molds – “Saving Grace” in which Brenda Blethyn plays a woman who unwittingly becomes involved in the cannabis business; and “Calendar Girls” about a group of women who make the bold decision to pose nude for charity. Now, Cole himself was ready to break out and do something new.
He continues: “A LOT LIKE LOVE is quite unusual because most romantic comedies are structured so that they essentially spend two hours building to a kiss and end with the very start of a relationship. This one starts right away with a kiss and then the fun of the story comes in the surprising developments that come after that when these potential lovers don’t come together.
It’s really a story of bad timing – Oliver and Emily keep meeting over and over but it’s always the wrong moment for them to fall in love for one reason or another. It begs the question of what happens when a chance encounter doesn’t lead to the people involved taking a chance, which seemed like a wonderful starting point.’”
Cole came to Los Angeles and met with producer Kevin Messick and writer Colin Patrick Lynch and the three agreed to work together to get the film made. Now, with Cole on board, Messick was able to take the script to Armyan Bernstein at Beacon Pictures – who was also won over by the romantic comedy’s blind-to-romance charms.
“From the minute we started reading the script, we loved the premise,” says Bernstein. “It was funny, enchanting and seemed very relevant to today’s audiences. We were also thrilled to find out Nigel Cole would be involved. He has shown himself to be very talented and I think his uniquely elegant sense of style really suits this material.”
Designing LOVE: About the City-Hopping Production
With a story that shuttles through time, space and dizzying life changes as Oliver and Emily take seven years to finally figure out what they felt the very first time they met, the visual design of A LOT LIKE LOVE had to be as whirling and shifting as Oliver and Emily’s relationship.
To capture the full scope of the tale’s many turns, director Nigel Cole used more than 55 locations, from New York’s China Town to Los Angeles’ El Matador Beach. From the start, the filmmakers knew the production would have to be just as jet-setting and mobile as Oliver and Emily’s lives. Explains producer Kevin Messick: “When you’re telling a story about two people who are in constant motion and constantly meeting each other in different places, times and situations, a good part of the production becomes trying to capture that sense of kinetic excitement.”
Adds producer Armyan Bernstein: “The story of A LOT LIKE LOVE takes place during a period of seven years that were packed with cultural events – a period that traverses from Clinton to Bush, through a major economic fall, through different hair styles, clothing styles, music styles and lifestyles. And of course what’s most interesting is that the attitude of our characters also changes over time – so there has to be a real sense of both an evolving world and an evolving friendship throughout the film.”
To make all these transitions – both in the external world and the internal lives of Emily and Oliver — come to life, Cole worked closely with director of photography John De Borman and production designer Tom Meyer.
For De Borman the task at hand was to subtly reveal time marching forward and emotions shifting in and out as Oliver and Emily’s relationship goes from cool flirtation to tight friendship to something perhaps a lot like love. To do this, De Borman begins the film with saturated, eye-popping colors and plenty of visual chaos than slowly evolves the look into a warmer, more relaxed style that reflects the character’s maturing and changing.
Cole and De Borman previously collaborated on Cole’s first film, “Saving Grace” and developed a kind of shorthand communication that blossomed during A LOT LIKE LOVE. “We got to a point where we really didn’t even have to speak to each other,” says Cole. “John just seems to know what I like and he makes it happen seamlessly. I think the film looks gorgeous and it’s all down to him.”
Meanwhile, production designer Meyer had the challenge of revealing Emily and Oliver’s constantly changing lives through their changing surroundings. He began by talking extensively with Nigel Cole about the characters’ backgrounds. “I really wanted Emily’s world and Oliver’s world to reflect who they are, where they come and how they change,” he explains. “A big part of the film of course is contrasting the very different life choices that Oliver and Emily make right off the bat. Oliver wants life to proceed in a straight line – he has all his ducks in a row and that’s something you see in his surroundings, while Emily’s life takes more unusual twists and turns, which is reflected in the kinds of Bohemian neighborhoods in which she lives.”
He continues: “So in New York, you have Oliver’s world which is the Upper East Side around Columbia and then Emily’s world, which is the Lower East Village. In Los Angeles, Oliver spends time with his family in the San Fernando Valley while Emily winds up on the funkier East side of Hollywood and Silverlake. It’s a running theme throughout.”
One of Meyer’s biggest tasks was finding a way to subtly move the characters not only from city to city but through time. “It’s much harder to have 1996 look like the past than to have say the 1950s look like the past,” notes Meyer. “The immediate past is a much more personal thing than the distant past, so you have to be more careful. You can’t take as many liberties.”
Two of Meyer’s favorite designs were for iconic romantic locations: the Brooklyn Bridge and the magical desert landscape of Joshua Tree. Explains Meyer: “It wasn’t written into the script that Oliver and Emily would wind up underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, but it just seemed to make sense in that neighborhood. Manhattan can be such a romantic place and when Nigel, John de Borman and I went to look at the bridge, it was beautiful. But we felt like we needed to add an extra touch. So my team designed some charming streetlamps to work with the structure of the promenade. And then John created this beautiful crane shot where you see Oliver and Emily walking up the railing and then – bling! – the lights come on. It’s like this visual exclamation point and it worked beautifully.”
A Lot Like Love (2005)
Directed by: Nigel Cole
Starring: Ashton Kutcher, Amanda Peet, Moon Bloodgood, Kathryn Hahn, Taryn Manning, Aimer Garcia, Molly Cheek, Sarah Ann Morris, Melissa van der Schyff, Theresa Spruill, Ali Larter, Molly Cheek
Screenplay by: Colin Patrick Lynch
Production Design by: Tom Meyer
Cinematography by: John de Borman
Film Editing by: Susan Littenberg
Costume Design by: Alix Friedberg
Set Decoration by: Meg Everist
Art Direction by: Denise Hudson
Music by: Alex Wurman
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, nudity and language.
Distributed by: Buena Vista Pictures
Release Date: April 22, 2005
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