In the aftermath of their supercharged couplings, and Matt’s growing awareness of Jenny’s relentless neuroses, he realizes he must break up with her. But hell hath no fury like a superwoman scorned, and Jenny wants revenge. For starters, she smashes through his ceiling, leaving a gaping hole. Then, she hangs him off a point in the crown of the Statue of Liberty, and wrecks his Mustang before putting it in perpetual orbit. And that’s just for starters.
Jenny is also determined to destroy Matt’s burgeoning relationship with colleague Hannah, played by Anna Faris of “Scary Movie” (1-4) fame. Hannah, coming off a less-than-satisfying relationship with a vacuous underwear model, and Matt share a deep friendship that quickly blossoms into passion.
Faris says she loved the story’s mix of the outrageous and the real. “My Super Ex-Girlfriend reminds me of Ivan’s `Ghostbusters,’” she says. “In our film, all of New York accepts the fact there’s a superhero who regularly saves the day,” says Faris. “It’s a given; nobody questions it” – just like every New Yorker seems to accept a giant Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man marauding through Manhattan in “Ghostbusters.”
Faris was working on “Scary Movie 4” when she got the call to play Hannah in My Super Ex-Girlfriend. The schedules for the two films overlapped, so Faris found herself shuttling between the productions.
She wasn’t the only cast member who had to juggle two concurrently-filming projects. Rainn Wilson continued to shoot his part of uber-obsequious paper company drone Dwight Schrute in the acclaimed sitcom “The Office” while filming My Super Ex-Girlfriend.
Wilson plays Matt’s soulless and shallow best friend, Vaughn Haige, whom Reitman calls a “fountain of bad advice to Matt, and probably the worst advisor in the world.” Adds Rainn Wilson: “Vaughn explains to Matt that the most important thing in life is sex.” How has he come to this conclusion? “Vaughn thinks he’s incredibly hip and a ladies’ man, but in reality he is neither.”
A film with a superhero wouldn’t be complete without a supervillain, and My Super Ex-Girlfriend offers Professor Bedlam, portrayed by Eddie Izzard, as Jenny’s arch-nemesis. (Truthfully, there’s nothing really “super” about Bedlam; as he notes, he’s just a regular man – with 10,000 times more money, intelligence and taste than the average person.)
Like Jenny, there’s something “off” about Bedlam. “If you’re going to have a supervillain in a contemporary movie set in New York, you have to find some off-kilter way of depicting him,” says Reitman. “We didn’t want a traditional comic book villain.”
Indeed, Bedlam isn’t your garden-variety super-baddie. His goal is to “neutralize” Jenny; for once the word is not a euphemism for “terminate.” He wants to permanently strip away her powers so she’ll be like any other run-of-the-mill, crazy ex-girlfriend.
Eddie Izzard is a non-traditional casting choice. “Eddie is such an original comedian,” says Reitman. “He has a regality that goes beyond his being English. The seriousness with which Bedlam sees himself adds a lovely comic tone to the film.”
Bedlam’s backstory with Jenny reveals that they were best friends in high school, until Jenny obtained her superpowers from a meteorite. With her new abilities – and hot new look – Jenny became very popular, leaving behind a heartbroken Barry. (“Bedlam” comes from his given name, Barry Edward Lambert…and he’s not really a professor.)
“Bedlam was unceremoniously dumped by Jenny,” says Izzard. “So he bears a huge grudge. His goal – really his life’s mission – is to bring her down. He’s become a genius and incalculably wealthy, and he has assembled an extensive criminal record just to get Jenny’s attention.”
As if Bedlam and Jenny aren’t making life difficult enough for Matt, his every action is being scrutinized by his boss, Carla Dunkirk, played by comic actor Wanda Sykes (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”). Carla is overly-sensitive to potential sexual harassment in the workplace and ever-vigilant about inappropriate behavior. “Carla has a field day with Matt’s strange behavior, from his encounters with Jenny, and his flirtations with Hannah,” says Sykes. “She thinks he’s gone off the deep-end, and she doesn’t want him taking the company down with him.”
A Closet and Wardrobe Fit for A Superhero
As conceived by screenwriter Don Payne, Jenny/G-Girl is a sexy, attractive, modern superhero. But, Payne wondered, what does a contemporary and gorgeous superhero look like? What does she wear Payne at first envisioned outfitting G-Girl with one iconic outfit, like the classic superheroes. Always with an eye to realism, Ivan Reitman suggested that Jenny have many designer outfits. After all, Reitman points out, “She’s a woman and would want to mix it up a bit.”
Most superheroes have secret retreats. Where would Jenny house her most important accoutrements: the extensive G-Girl “collection”? The obvious answer: the world’s largest closet, which is bigger than most apartments. There, Jenny stores hundreds of outfits, attesting to the fact that while she may be invulnerable, her wardrobe is not.
Clothing helps define Jenny’s/G-Girl’s character, and Reitman entrusted the formidable challenge and opportunity of designing the characters’ outfits to Laura Jean Shannon. Shannon, working closely with Uma Thurman, turned G-Girl into a modern-day superhero/fashionista, with numerous distinct looks and styles. Shannon’s visits to numerous specialty shops in New York’s east Village helped her bring together the impressive G-Girl collection.
Thurman, like Shannon, wanted the designs to maintain the notion of “girl power” – that G-Girl’s look and outfits would be more than a male fantasy of a female superhero. The costumes had to be relatable to women, and would make G-Girl feel empowered from the inside.
Shannon was impressed with Thurman’s ideas for the costumes, as well as the actresses’ ability to take an outfit to another level. “Uma would come into a fitting room, put on the clothes, move and stand in certain ways – and transform the clothes into something different,” marvels Shannon.
Super-Catfight!
Stunt coordinator George Aguilar worked with Ivan Reitman to create several spectacular action sequences, while maintaining the realistic tone mandated by the director. “We didn’t want any stunt – no matter how outrageous – to look cartoonish,” says Aguilar. “The fight and flying scenes had to have a gritty, `New York’ kind of feel.”
One of Aguilar’s biggest challenges was helping to design, with visual effects supervisor Erik Nash and director of photography Don Burgess, a huge fight sequence between Anna Faris’ Hannah, who has become newly super-enabled, and Uma Thurman’s G-Girl. This super-battle, which Rainn Wilson calls “the hottest catfight in the history of superhero comedies,” was staged on and above Second Avenue in Lower Manhattan.
Aguilar choreographed the scene, working first with stunt doubles, then with the principals for three weeks of preparation and filming. “It was a tricky and complicated stunt,” says Aguilar. “We had two people in the air, fighting and plummeting to earth – and looking great the entire time!”
Thurman, who had trained for more than a year in wirework and the martial arts for the “Kill Bill” films, needed little rehearsal for this and other big action/stunt sequences. Faris, too, had had some wirework experience from her work in the “Scary Movie” films. Luke Wilson, who takes to the air with Jenny for the high-flying lovemaking scene, was a newcomer to the world of fight-and-flight stunts, and his learning curve was somewhat steeper than that of his two leading ladies.
Visual Effects
“In a movie with a superhero character, visual effects are important,” notes Ivan Reitman who, having directed the effects-heavy “Ghostbusters” (and its sequel) and “Evolution,” is familiar with that highly-technical world. “But I didn’t want effects to rule the story.”
Echoes visual effects supervisor Erik Nash: “We have a lot of visual effects, but the film is not about the effects. It’s a comedy, and the effects are there to add to the humor and fun.”
Reitman wanted G-Girl’s flying to have a distinct look. “We discussed the idea of G-Girl creating a visual disturbance in the air – which we called a `vortex wake’ – that would make her more visible when she’s flying at super-speeds,” Nash recalls. “She travels so fast she bends the light in the air around her. It’s her signature trail,” made possible by the miracles of computer generated imagery.
What good is having the ability to fly with vortex wakes, if you can’t devise creative ways to torment your ex? G-Girl, as imaginative as she is crazy, throws a live Great White shark through Matt’s apartment window. The shark lands on his bed, before thrashing savagely around the apartment in a wave of destruction.
The shark sequence is a big visual effects showpiece and one of the film’s most complex sequences. “It’s an incongruous and fantastical idea,” says Reitman. “You had to believe the shark could be there and interact within that environment and with the characters.” The shark was a digital creation – a streamlined, darker and even meaner version than an actual Great White.
To map out the scene’s beats, Nash and his team prepared elaborate pre-visualization storyboards. They then animated and choreographed the scenes. When camera positions were determined, they cut together a preliminary or test version of the scene, called an animatic, which became the template for the shark attack.
Sharks, airborne sex, super-catfights…they’re just a few of the many surprises of My Super Ex-Girlfriend. But as Ivan Reitman points out, these all work to service a story relatable to anyone. “We all had relationships go bad,” he says. “We’re just taking that notion to another level.”
My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006)
Directed by: Ivan Reitman
Starring: Uma Thurman, Luke Wilson, Anna Faris, Eddie Izzard, Rainn Wilson, Wanda Sykes, Stelio Savante, Margaret Anne Florence, Eva Veronika, Catherine Reitman, Tara Thompson
Screenplay by: Don Payne
Production Design by: Jane Musky
Cinematography by: Don Burgess
Film Editing by: Wendy Greene Bricmont, Sheldon Kahn
Costume Design by: Laura Jean Shannon
Set Decoration by: Debra Schutt
Art Direction by: Patricia Woodbridge
Music by: Teddy Castellucci
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, crude humor, language and brief nudity.
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: July 21, 2006
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