New York Minute Movie Trailer. Actresses, producers and international business entrepreneurs, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have entertained audiences around the world for their entire lives, ever since making their television debut at the age of nine months on the beloved television series Full House.
After building remarkable careers as the executive producer-stars of a wildly successful home video series with nearly forty million units sold, as well as launching the mary-kateandashley brand, including a popular fashion and lifestyle products line, children’s book collection and videogame franchise, which will collectively gross over $1 billion at retail this year, Mary-Kate and Ashley bring their talents to the action comedy New York Minute, their coming-of-age theatrical film debut.
“Mary-Kate and Ashley have the potential to become very formidable comediennes,” says producer Denise Di Novi, whose array of hit films include A Walk to Remember, Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands and Heathers. “Their lifetime of experience has allowed them to really hone their comedic and dramatic skills. They’ve got great instincts and timing.”
Di Novi and her company, Di Novi Pictures, partnered with Mary-Kate and Ashley’s Dualstar Productions to develop an action comedy for the talented actresses. “We were looking for the right project for Mary-Kate and Ashley to transition from direct-to-video projects to theatrical features,” says producer Robert Thorne, CEO of Dualstar Entertainment Group, the corporate umbrella for Mary-Kate and Ashley and the mary-kateandashley brand. “We found a great story that we could develop for them.” “We thought it would be cool to do an After Hours kind of caper with two young women alone in the city, completely thrown in the midst of chaos as strange events unfold around them,” executive producer Alison Greenspan elaborates.
The collaboration yielded New York Minute, the story of Jane and Roxy Ryan, “two very different sisters who get caught up in a surreal chain of events,” Thorne describes, “but they find a way to triumph by bridging their differences – which turn out not to be so great as either of them imagine.”
“The script had everything we wanted in our first film – action, comedy and heart,” enthuses Mary-Kate. The Ryan sisters’ strained relationship is put to the test by the escalating events they face throughout their tumultuous day. “Basically, everything that can go wrong does go wrong,” Ashley says. “As wacky as the story gets, the humor and the characters are really relatable to everyone.”
To bring the screenplay’s vibrant blend of comedy, action and adventure to life, the producers turned to Emmy-winning television and feature film director Dennie Gordon, who has helmed acclaimed episodes of The Practice, Ally McBeal, Sports Night and HBO’s Tracey Takes On… “Dennie has a great eye, and she’s an actor’s director,” observes Di Novi, who previously collaborated with Gordon on the hit romantic comedy What a Girl Wants. “She knows how to draw wonderful performances from her cast, and make them shine across the spectrum from comedy to drama.”
“Dennie came in with storyboards, great ideas and this amazing energy,” Ashley recalls. “She was a perfect fit with us.” “She really got the script, and shared our vision for the movie,” adds Mary-Kate. “We have a strong, open relationship, and that’s what you need in a director.”
“Like the characters they play, Mary-Kate and Ashley are sophisticated young women, but at the same time, they can still giggle like girls,” Gordon observes. “New York Minute captures the spirit and intensity of this time in their own lives, and New York is the backdrop for their coming of age.”
About The Story and Characters
Jane and Roxy Ryan are twin sisters with radically different approaches to life. Freewheelin’ Roxy and compulsively organized Jane have always danced to the beat of different drummers, but ever since their mother died when they were ten years old, the Ryan sisters have drifted farther and farther apart. “Their relationship is strained,” Mary-Kate says. “They believe they’re just so different that there’s no point in even trying to be close.” “When Jane and Roxy try to have a conversation,” says Ashley, “there’s an awkwardness between them because they’ve lost their connection over the years.”
Their father, Dr. Ryan, played by Dr. Drew Pinksy of the popular syndicated radio show Loveline, can barely find enough hours in the day to run his busy medical practice, let alone find a way to bridge the distance between his estranged daughters. Meanwhile, Jane has assumed the role of family caretaker. “Jane thinks that she needs to take her mom’s place,” Ashley explains. “On top of being an obsessive overachiever, Jane has a seriously over-developed sense of responsibility. So she cooks and schedules and tries to nurture Roxy and her dad in her motherly way. Jane is totally driven, but she really admires Roxy’s ‘whatever’ attitude, even though it’s hard for her to admit.”
Deciding who would play which role came naturally to the sisters. “You don’t really ever see someone my age play an uptight, high strung person, and I thought Jane would be fun for me to portray,” Ashley says. “People may perceive Mary-Kate as being more laid back and me as being a little more tightly-wound than she is, which is not completely true, but it’s fun to play off of each other that way and it works really well in the film.”
“This project gave us a chance to play really exaggerated versions of our own personalities,” says Mary-Kate. “Although I don’t have a tattoo or play the drums like Roxy, I like to be spontaneous and live in the moment.”
On the day in question, both Jane and Roxy are looking to take it to the limit in the Big Apple, where Jane is due to give an economics speech at a competition for a prestigious scholarship to Oxford University. Meanwhile, Roxy’s planning to sneak backstage at a Simple Plan music video shoot and slip her demo CD to the band’s A&R executives.
But first, they’ll have to get past Max Lomax, Nassau County’s most fiercely dedicated truant officer. The ever-elusive Roxy is number one on this wannabe cop’s Most Wanted list, and her upstanding sister is nothing but an accomplice in his highly-trained eyes. “Lomax has a tragic history of trying to get onboard the New York City police department and never being able to, so he got into the truancy business,” says Eugene Levy, star of the blockbuster American Pie trilogy and the improvisational satires A Mighty Wind, Best In Show and Waiting for Guffman.
Sharing Levy’s penchant for character detail, Gordon bonded with the versatile actor when she described the pitiful, rusted-out police car she was creating for Lomax to drive. “Dennie has a great sense of fun and she is totally willing to go with ideas that you come up with, even at the last second,” says Levy, who took inspiration for his overzealous character from Don Knotts’ portrayal of bumbling deputy Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show. “Barney Fife is one of the great characters ever created for comedy. I thought it was funny to have a little Barney Fife in Lomax, a guy who thinks he’s really good at what he does. He’s a bit cocky, he’s the best in the business, but he’s not a real cop.”
“Eugene was on our wish list, and we were lucky enough to get him and so many of the actors we had in mind when we were developing the script,” Mary-Kate attests.
Hot on Roxy’s tail, Lomax busts a pool party in progress at her manager Justin’s house, and presses him for the 411 on her whereabouts. The savvy young manager is played by Jack Osbourne of MTV’s The Osbournes.
“Including my grandfather, my family has worked in the music industry for five generations, so playing the manager of a band was a real kick for me,” Osbourne says. “But I was completely blown away when I found out I’d be working with Eugene Levy. I loved him in American Pie and pretty much everything I’ve ever seen him in.”
“Working with that kid was a kick,” Levy says of Osbourne. “I didn’t know what to expect, honestly. I thought the language would be flying left, right and center. But he’s really sweet. He kept breaking up when we were doing our scene. In the middle of a take, he would just start laughing, which was really refreshing.”
As Lomax deduces that Roxy has ditched class to attend the Simple Plan music video shoot, the Ryan sisters board a Manhattan-bound commuter train. Jane practices her speech from meticulously-prepared notecards that she keeps in her precious dayplanner, in which she schedules her entire life in fifteen minute increments.
But Roxy’s hyperactive streak distracts Jane, and their sparring causes serious hot coffee damage to Hudson McGill, an executive who has the misfortune of sitting between the squabbling sisters. Saturday Night Live veteran Darrell Hammond plays McGill, the java-stained exec whose scalding encounter with the Ryans is the beginning of a not-so-beautiful relationship. “It’s very unpleasant for everyone involved,” Hammond confirms. “To McGill, these girls are like a perfect storm of bad luck.”
When Roxy’s failed attempt to evade the conductor at ticket time gets them both kicked off the train, Jane collides with Jim, a handsome bike messenger bound for the city. “In the middle of all this chaos, they have this instant chemistry,” says Riley Smith, known to audiences for his recurring role on the hit TV series 24 and his turn in the Cuba Gooding Jr. football drama Radio.
“Jane develops a crush on Jim just by looking into his gorgeous blue eyes,” Ashley says.
To make it up to Jane after being booted off the train, Roxy scores them a free ride to the city from limo driver Bennie Bang, unaware that this gangster crony has just slipped a computer chip containing millions of dollars worth of pirated music into her bag in an attempt to evade the Feds. Bennie works for his adoptive Chinese mother, Ma Bang, who runs a music pirating ring out of her nail salon in Chinatown, and he’s bent on getting that chip back.
“Bennie’s not really Chinese, but he thinks he is, so he speaks with a Chinese accent,” says Andy Richter, star of the comedy Big Trouble and the former co-host of Late Night with Conan O’Brien. “It’s fun to play a villain because you get to say things like ‘I’ve got your boyfriend,’ and ‘I’ll kill you,’ which you don’t get to say when you’re playing Florence Nightingale.”
The role of Ma Bang’s #1 Adopted Son required Richter to speak a few phrases in Mandarin Chinese. “I learned it phonetically,” he reveals. “I couldn’t retain it for more than five minutes because I wasn’t really sure what I was saying.”
After Bennie chauffeurs Jane and Roxy into the city and they get wise to his shady vibe, they dispatch the driver with some martial arts handiwork…only to get doused by a Slurpee and soaked by a car cruising through a mud puddle. To make matters way worse, Jane discovers that she has left her precious dayplanner – and her speech – in Bennie’s limo.
Roxy seizes the day and sneaks them into a hotel suite temporarily vacated by Senator Anne Baxter-Lipton, a powerful politico with a soft spot for her bizarre-looking lapdog, Reinaldo, a rare Chinese Crested. “After years of playing eccentric character roles, the chance to play an attractive senator with integrity really appealed to me,” says Andrea Martin, the Emmy-winning writer-actress who followed her successful run on the comedy series SCTV with hilarious performances in the films My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Wag the Dog. “I love that I have no costume changes and no leopard hats or glasses.”
“Andrea was hilarious,” Mary-Kate reports. “She made us laugh all the time, especially when she was doing her scenes with Reinaldo the dog.”
Roxy and Jane’s attempt at a quick clean-and-dash is disrupted by Trey, the Senator’s charming son, who gets a pleasant shock when he discovers the two beautiful young women – wearing nothing but a robe and a towel – crashing his mom’s hotel suite.
Naturally, Jane freaks out, but Roxy keeps her cool under pressure, making her all the more attractive to Trey. “He’s drawn to Roxy because they have similar attitudes,” suggests Jared Padalecki, a series regular on Gilmore Girls and a co-star of the blockbuster comedy Cheaper by the Dozen. “Trey’s not going to run his life by a schedule. He kind of lets life discover him, instead of trying force himself on life, and Roxy is the same way.”
All plans literally go out the window when the Senator unexpectedly returns to her room, and Reinaldo makes an unscheduled exit out onto the building’s precarious ledge. Trey distracts his mom while Roxy and Jane – and Reinaldo – make an exhilarating getaway via a window washing rig.
A dayplanner-for-chip exchange with Bennie at the Simple Plan music video shoot goes totally awry, and the girls narrowly escape Lomax with a well-timed stagedive into the mosh pit. After sloshing through a sewer main, they emerge in Harlem, just blocks from Columbia University, where Jane is supposed to deliver her speech in less than an hour.
The bedraggled duo duck into the House of Bling, and with a little assistance from Big Shirl and her posse, Jane and Roxy are ready to rock. “Big Shirl gives them blinged-out makeovers,” says Mary Bond Davis, star of Broadway’s hit musical Hairspray. “She’s just trying to help them have fun in life.”
Gordon, Mary-Kate and Ashley cast Davis in the film after seeing her roof-raising performance in Hairspray. “She completely blew us away,” says Gordon. “I set out to create a role for her as our hip-hop diva.”
With Lomax closing in, it looks like Roxy is one beat away from being expelled from high school. Meanwhile, Bennie kidnaps Jane and locks her inside Ma Bang’s nail salon while he tries to force Reinaldo, who has eaten the valuable computer chip, to relinquish it.
Will another chance encounter with Jim the bike messenger help Jane outwit Bennie in time to race 111 blocks uptown and give her speech to win the Oxford scholarship? Will Roxy think fast and save the day with a little help from Trey?
Anything can happen in a New York Minute, even for two estranged sisters who ultimately discover they have more in common than they ever imagined. “At first, Jane thinks that the whole day is about her making the perfect speech and winning the scholarship,” says Ashley. “On the way there, she realizes that she wants a lot of other things, too.”
“After spending the whole day together going through all of these disastrous situations, Roxy and Jane see sides of each other that they never knew about,” Mary-Kate concludes. “They realize that they genuinely like each other and decide to embrace their differences instead of being divided by them.”
New York Minute (2004)
Directed by: Dennie Gordon
Starring: Mary-Kate Olsen, Ashley Olsen, Andy Richter, Jared Padalecki, Riley Smith, Andrea Martin, Eugene Levy, Alannah Ong, Darrell Hammond, Drew Pinsky
Screenplay by: Emily Fox, Adam Cooper
Production Design by: Michael Carlin
Cinematography by: Greg Gardiner
Film Editing by: Roderick Davis, Michael Jablow
Costume Design by: Christopher Hargadon
Set Decoration by: Jaro Dick
Art Direction by: Peter Grundy
Music by: George S. Clinton
MPAA Rating: PG for mild sensuality and thematic elements.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: May 7, 2004
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