The Friends and Family Plan
In light of the screenplay’s deft mixture of drama and comedy, casting the film was exceptionally important. Freundlich developed a concept that drove his choice of actors: “I liked the idea of having people in the movie who were a little bit of a surprise in a comedy,” he explains. “Obviously, Julie, David, Maggie and Billy have done a lot of different things, but you don’t think of them as comedians, necessarily, and you don’t think of them as romantic comedy stars.” This strategy lent the film “a basis in reality, which was important,” says Freundlich. “I could go as far as I wanted but still have a real, emotionally rooted story.”
Casting went smoothly, according to Tim Perell, mainly because of Freundlich’s popularity as a collaborator. “Bart is a real magnet for actors,” says the producer. “They love working with him, so that made it easy.”
First and foremost, Freundlich hoped that his wife, four-time Oscar nominee Julianne Moore, might agree to star as Rebecca, a neurotic actress, wife and mother who constantly fears she’s one play away from career oblivion. Freundlich had previously directed his wife in World Traveler and The Myth of Fingerprints.
“For Rebecca, he always had Julianne in his head,” says Perell. “That character needed to be played by somebody with a tremendous amount of strength, independence and resolve, and that is who Julie is. She was a very easy fit for that character.”
“I thought the script was great. It’s very funny, entertaining, realistic and, finally, moving. It’s just an absolutely delightful, charming script,” says Moore. In addition, she continues, “The movie is very frank about relationships and the way that we deal with each other, and also the differences between men and women.”
Freundlich was especially excited to work with his wife on this particular role, as he was eager to display her rarely shown comedic side. He explains, “There’s no doubt in my mind that she’s the best actress alive-I also think she’s very funny. People don’t use her in that way a lot.
“I want to challenge Julie, because I know she can do anything,” he continues. “It’s like wanting to watch someone who’s really talented try something new, because you know they’re going to come up with something better than you could have possibly imagined. As a director, and even more as a writer, that’s such a gift. You just know that she’s going to mine the material for more than you could have hoped for.”
Moore indeed saw much to explore in the material. “I think what you see with these characters is what a regular downtown New York life is like,” she says. “It’s really about the inside of anybody’s relationship, about what your life is like as a married person, and the family. It celebrates male and female friendships as well. Bart himself values marriage and relationships and what it means to be in a family, to have a community and friends and to be married – the romanticism as well as the reality of it. Bart shows the pitfalls and the difficulties, but then celebrates the joy of it all, too,” adds Moore.
Since Freundlich also wrote the part of Tom specifically for friend David Duchovny, the actor was the next to receive the script. It was Duchovny’s hilarious turns playing a preening, sexually malevolent version of himself on “The Larry Sanders Show” that convinced Freundlich and Perell that he could really shine in the part of Tom, Rebecca’s husband, who has quit his advertising executive job in order to be a stay-at-home dad but falls into an affair with a mother at his son’s school.
Duchovny read the script and liked it, and quickly agreed to sign on. “Those of us who know Bart know that he’s got a terrific sense of humor and is a talented filmmaker,” says Duchovny. “We’ve been waiting for him to make a comedy. I think that his movies, although they’ve been great, haven’t reflected his sense of humor.”
Furthermore, Duchovny thought Freundlich’s script was smart, funny, “and in the earlier Woody Allen tradition of Annie Hall and Manhattan, where there was a lot of verbal intelligence and sexual politics evident in the dialogue, as well as sight gags and slapstick.”
Duchovny was thrilled to be working with Julianne Moore again. He had worked with the actress previously on the comedy Evolution, but “we didn’t have as much to do on that film as we had here,” says Duchovny. “It was really fun to be able to relax with her in realistic husband-and-wife drama-with-comedy scenes. To be able to experience her talent, play off it and be the beneficiary of her great competence and imagination has been an inspiration for me.”
Freundlich approached friend Billy Crudup for the part of Rebecca’s brother and Tom’s best friend Tobey, an incorrigible cut-up who seems more concerned about preserving his prized New York City parking spot and stalking his shrink than settling into a mature relationship with his longtime girlfriend, Elaine. “I thought the script was very funny,” Crudup says. “I knew the part would be great fun. I get to be unabashedly goofy.”
Crudup, who has known Freundlich since their days at NYU graduate school, previously worked with him on the film World Traveler. Crudup respects Freundlich’s directorial creativity and shares a similar aesthetic sensibility with him. “I’ve known Bart for a while and admire his work,” says the actor. “I was inspired by his fearlessness and his imagination.”
Understandably, Elaine has a hard time accepting these traits. “She is looking for their relationship to evolve. She’s in constant search of some indication from him that he understands the dilemma,” says Crudup. “Tobey takes a little prodding before he’s capable of moving forward. Everyone in his life tries to help him make the leap into maturity. But as is the case with most of us, we all have to learn on our own, in our own time.”
For producer Tim Perell, Crudup’s performance was nothing short of a revelation. “I’ve known Billy for a long time, and I think he’s one of the goofiest people I know. But prior to TRUST THE MAN, we’ve never seen it on film,” he says. “When we suggested him to people who didn’t know him, they couldn’t imagine him doing this role. But he has a lot in common with Tobey, and Tobey’s perspective, and Tobey’s sense of humor. He just completely inhabited the character.”
Although Freundlich and Perell had at first envisioned an older actress for the role of the fourth player in the quartet, Tobey’s girlfriend Elaine, an aspiring children’s book writer, 28-year old Maggie Gyllenhaal won them over.
“Maggie is younger than the role was initially written,” says Perell, “but she had a maturity and fragility that seemed perfect for it. Midway through the read-through on the first day, Bart leaned over to me when Maggie was reading and said, `we hit the jackpot with her.’ And he was absolutely right. We got lucky.”
“Maggie as Elaine has been the biggest surprise to me,” says Freundlich. “She’s uncompromisingly real. We shared a lot of ideas about her character before starting principal photography.”
“Bart and I talked quite a bit on the phone before I decided to take the role,” echoes Gyllenhaal, who has an impressive list of credits including Secretary and Mona Lisa Smile. “Everything he said was exactly what I wanted to hear. I’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out if a director will be good for me to work with, and I thought, Bart really speaks my language.”
Like Crudup, Gyllenhaal was enchanted by the script. “It’s the best script for a romantic comedy that I’ve ever read,” she raves. “I read a lot of romantic comedies that are about nothing and feel really formulaic. This movie was immediately smarter and more interesting to me.”
Gyllenhaal’s character, Elaine, loves Tobey-but not the eight years without a proposal from him. “She wants to be in a relationship with someone who really wants to communicate and commit,” says Gyllenhaal. “When she breaks up with Tobey, she’s saying, `step up and be with me, or else I need to find somebody who will. It’s my life, and I don’t want to compromise.'”
For Eva Mendes, who plays Faith, a sexy former college flame that complicates life for Tobey, the draw to the film was the opportunity to work with Julianne Moore. She had met the actress a few times through their work as Revlon spokeswomen.
“To be totally honest, I’m a huge fan. I’m borderline obsessed,” gushes Mendes. “I look up to Julianne and her choices.” Mendes was also excited to work with Bart Freundlich after seeing his two previous films and admiring their depth and intelligence. She found working with the director “fun and easy.”
After reading the script, Mendes was smitten. “I thought, wow, this is really good. It’s full of little comments and situations that are so funny and honest,” she explains. “I wanted to be part of this movie no matter what, even if I was an extra walking through the background.”
She also fell in love with her character. “I really love Faith,” says the actress. “She’s somebody that Tobey had a flirtation with. She runs into him again years later, and she still has it for him even though she’s now married.”
TRUST THE MAN is also peppered with several first-rate cameo performances, including Garry Shandling as Tom and Rebecca’s marriage counselor, Ellen Barkin as a publishing company chief who takes more than a passing interest in Elaine, Bob Balaban as Tobey’s beleaguered shrink, and James Le Gros as an eccentric singer-songwriter whom Rebecca sees as a potential match for Elaine.
“I’ve been pretty lucky that I’ve had this huge support system, not only with the four leads, but with Garry and Ellen and Bob and James and everyone else,” says Freundlich. “Sometimes, I really can’t believe what’s happened to me.”
“These are all friends and colleagues of ours,” adds Julianne Moore, describing most of the cast and crew. “It’s been tremendous to be able to make the movie this way. Bart’s parents are in it. Both of our kids are in the movie. It’s been a great family endeavor.”
Moore adds, “I think you talk to anybody who works with a partner and your home life is generally very different than your working life. You don’t always participate in your spouse’s working life, so when I work with Bart I am very proud of him; I’m thrilled by what he does. It’s a nice opportunity to be close to him in a different way.”
As with any “family endeavor,” there is the potential for conflict-but it didn’t arise on this set. “What surprised me was that I could work with these people who I know so well, and we weren’t at each other’s throats,” says Freundlich. “They brought what’s creative about them to the table, and I brought what’s creative about me, and we could sit there and collaborate and not want to kill each other.”
Trust the Man (2006)
Directed by: Bart Freundlich
Starring: Julianne Moore, David Duchovny, Billy Crudup, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Eva Mendes, Ellen Barkin, James LeGros, Sascha Gillen, Sarah Knowlton, Dagmara Dominczyk
Screenplay by: Bart Freundlich
Production Design by: Kevin Thompson
Cinematography by: Tim Orr
Film Editing by: John Gilroy
Costume Design by: Michael Clancy
Set Decoration by: Mila Khalevich
Art Direction by: John Nyomarkay
Music by: Clint Mansell
MPAA Rating: R for language and sexual content.
Distributed by: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Release Date: September 8, 2006
Visits: 53
