Producers, Writer Interview He's Just Not That Into You

MoviesOnline sat down with director Ken Kwapis, producer Nancy Juvonen, writers Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, and author Greg Behrendt to talk about their new movie, “He’s Just Not That Into You.”

Based on the wildly popular bestseller from "Sex and the City" scribes Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, "He's Just Not That Into You" tells the stories of a group of interconnected, Baltimore-based twenty- and thirty-somethings as they navigate their various relationships from the shallow end of the dating pool through the deep, murky waters of married life, trying to read the signs of the opposite sex... and hoping to be the exceptions to the "no-exceptions" rule.
 
The film boasts an all-star cast, including Academy Award winner Ben Affleck as Neil; Jennifer Aniston as Beth; Drew Barrymore as Mary; Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly as Janine; Kevin Connolly as Conor; Bradley Cooper as Ben; Ginnifer Goodwin as Gigi; Scarlett Johansson as Anna; Kris Kristofferson as Ken; and Justin Long as Alex.
 
"He's Just Not That Into You" is directed by Ken Kwapis from a screenplay by Abby Kohn & Marc Silverstein, based on the book by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo. Nancy Juvonen produced the film, with Drew Barrymore, Toby Emmerich, Michele Weiss and Michael Beugg serving as executive producers and Michael Disco and Gwenn Stroman co-producing.

Here’s what the director, producer, writers and author had to tell us:
 
Q: GREG, I’M SORT OF WAITING FOR YOU TO WRITE “HE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU,” BUT UNTIL THEN MAYBE YOU CAN GIVE ME SOME ADVICE. WHERE DO YOU THINK I CAN FIND A GIRL LIKE GIGI IN THE MOVIE WHO’S JUST OPEN AND EXCITED TO MEET NEW PEOPLE?
 
GREG BEHRENDT: (laughs) If I knew that, I’d be a gazillionaire. To answer your first question, the reason it’s “She’s Just Not That Into You,” I generally say is because men don’t usually buy books of that nature. Guys are different. You break up with a guy who gets drunk and stands on your lawn, and then the cops come, and that’ s how he knows it’s over. I know, isn’t Gigi just something, right? She’s so spectacular, so well written, and so real. I know what. You want to meet Gigis, come with me when I do stand-up because they all come backstage and they’re all looking for some advice. I’ll introduce you to them.
 
Q: KEN, CAN YOU TALK ABOUT WHAT IT WAS LIKE WORKING WITH SUCH A FANTASTIC CAST?
 
KEN KWAPIS: The great thing about this group is I think each of the actors really came aboard because they wanted to say something personal about life and love and rejection and hope, and what was also wonderful was that, as glamorous a group as it is, as beautiful a group as it is, I think everyone also really relished the idea of being able to play characters who were real, and not to be part of a story that’s just a plot or a concept. So often with romantic comedies, the characters are there simply to serve as a concept, and in this case, it’s really about the lives of these characters and their behavior, and I think again, it’s no surprise that actors of this caliber stepped up. It’s all there on the page.

NANCY JUVONEN: It was in the writing.
 
Q: CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF THE PROJECT, HOW IT CAME ALONG, AND ALSO IF YOU THINK A MALE PERSPECTIVE ON ROMANTIC COMEDY COULD LEAD TO OTHER GOOD FILMS?
 
NANCY JUVONEN: The origin of the project was my complete obsession with the line, and then thus the book, “He’s just not that into you,” and I pursued Greg and New Line who owned the rights to it and they were sort of keeping it in house for a painful year, year and a half for me. And then they finally said, “Alright, I think we’re in, let’s do it, pitch your ideas,” and I had a really clear vision of how I wanted the movie to feel, and that I thought it should be a movie. And I was aware that this amazing self-help book hit this chord for women especially, but I think that the freedom of “Hey, he doesn’t like you” or “She’s just looking in another direction, she likes someone else” — just that information, I think, can really free us up. So I was completely obsessed, and then finally they said, “Fine, you can do it if you’re this crazy for it,” and I got Marc and Abby on board and we couldn’t have had more fun developing this.

I mean, I think we developed for a while. It was intensive. You hear that and you think, maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, but we would just spend hours on the phone, just giving each other stories. I mean, the closet story really happened to a friend of mine, but there are these things that are like wow, let’s use this stuff that we know is real and sort of create stories around it. And then they really took Gigi’s character and literally put her in a box — Gigi — and said, she’s going to be over here on a date with Conor, Conor’s going to leave, she’s going to like him, and he’s going to call somebody that he has his eye on. So we started the movie with that concept.
 
ABBY KOHN: When we went in to talk to New Line about it, we literally came in with a big flow chart and had each person’s name with a dotted line. I think it was a one-way liking and a solid line if it was a two-way liking. We really had a full-on flow-chart as we presented it to them, so they could clearly see how all these relationships were going to be satellites in this relationship…
 
NANCY JUVONEN: … how they would connect and how they’d intercross. Once we had the script, we were up and running.
 
Q: WHEN YOU CREATED THESE CHARACTERS, WERE THEY BASED ON ANY ONE YOU KNEW OR WERE THEY ENTIRELY FICTIONAL?
 
NANCY JUVONEN: They’re all fictional. None of them are actually a real story, other than the idea of the story. But I think the thing that we relied on the most was ourselves. We’ve had our hearts broken and we’ve broken a heart and I think you’ve got to have both to get life.
 
ABBY KOHN: I had a dinner at my house with seven ladies who came over and the only thing you had to do was bring your most painful and embarrassing stories and a lot of wine to get those stories going.
 
KEN KWAPIS: The answering machine came from that.
 
ABBY KOHN: Yes, the answering machine came from that. And also being invited to a party — am I co-hosting or just a guest?  That was real. That was something that I realized had semi-happened to me, but had definitely happened to a friend of mine.  So a lot of those things weren’t based on one character but on lots of stories from us and our friends all sort of weaved into the different people.
 
Q: WERE THERE ANY THOUGHTS ABOUT MAKING SOME OTHER GROUPS OUTSIDE OF THE WHITE, 20, 30-YEAR-OLD GROUP IN THIS? I WOULD HAVE LOVED TO HAVE SEEN MORE WOMEN OF COLOR OR MAYBE AN OLDER COUPLE. WHY DID YOU LIMIT IT?
 
NANCY JUVONEN: I know for us, we really didn’t want to walk into fertility situations. And we didn’t want to walk into 25 years of marriage, which is a great story, it’s being told right now in theatres near you. We just thought — we’re going to stay away from those things. I’m really bad at casting a little bit color blind, because I tend to go for who fits in that role, versus like — there’s something strange to me, and I’ve been told before, you must put a person of color somewhere, and it feels like not organic, and it’s not that you don’t want to, it’s that you are meeting with people, and their characters are unfolding.

We didn’t do any reads for this film. We met with people. Ken and I sat in rooms and met with people and had like therapy sessions about relationships, because we’re all in them. So, I think just certain people sort of clicked in and clicked on, and the studio is like, “Don’t you take a ‘no’ from Jen Aniston, you’re going to get her.” You know, so you’re being led in certain directions and you’re falling into others, and I don’t think we — we weren’t doing anything on purpose other than it sort of happened to be what it was. The characters.
 
KEN KWAPIS: We were very mindful of all those considerations, but then someone like Ginnifer Goodwin would walk into the room and basically own that role in a second, and there was after that no choice. That was it. It’s hers. She was born to play it. And at the same time, we were completely mindful that on some level, the film is sort of putting up a whole world. So it needs to embrace a lot of different things.

NANCY JUVONEN: In a weird way, we hope everyone just squints. I really feel like in the first 10 minutes, you’re like, “Oh my God! Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck…” and you’re sort of going, “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” But it settles itself in and you sort of forget that they’re these superstars, and we’re hoping that, across the board, they just fit the right character.
 
Q: KEN, THERE ARE CERTAIN AUDIENCE EXPECTATIONS OF A ROMANTIC COMEDY OR GENRE ROLE MODELS LIKE “LOVE ACTUALLY,” WITH THE MULTIPLE INTERSECTING STORYLINES, OR “WHEN HARRY MET SALLY,” WITH THE CAMERA VIGNETTES TO BREAK UP THE CHAPTERS. DO YOU TINKER WITH THOSE AT YOUR OWN PERIL OTHERWISE THE AUDIENCE ISN’T GOING TO GO OUT HAPPY?
 
KEN KWAPIS: I have a lot of different answers, but let me just say that what I love about the script, and this is what attracted me in the first place, is that although it had familiar elements, it actually seemed to behave in a very different way. “Love Actually” is a terrific film. I always felt a little bit like there were so many story lines in that film that it was hard for me personally to get under the skin of some of them. When I read Marc and Abby’s script, I said, “Oh my god, this is a sprawling canvas, but not too many stories that I can’t get in depth with all of them.” In fact, I think what this film does do is avoid a lot of the overly familiar romantic comedy scenes, and in fact we as a group put together a promo which you can currently see on iTunes entitled “Ten Chick Flick Cliches that are not in ‘He’s Just Not That Into You’” and it features Kevin Connolly and Bradley Cooper and Justin Long. Some of those clichés are:  there’s no makeover montage, there are no people singing into random objects, things like that.

Actually, the bigger thing is, what I love about the script is that it doesn’t run joke to joke, it doesn’t run gag to gag. The reason things are funny is because the script really is well observed in terms of behavior. Many of the things that people laugh at the hardest are things where they’re kind of cringing as they’re laughing. What Gigi does is truly cringe-inducing at times. I feel the other thing that’s great about it is that it then will turn on a dime and be in a wholly organic way much more depthful or emotional than you get with a lot of typical romantic comedies. So again, the big answer is — you’re always trying to do a dance that the audience knows, but you’re not a good filmmaker unless you show them a few new steps along the way.
 
Q: GREG, CAN YOU TALK ABOUT ONE THING IN THE BOOK THAT YOU’D LOVED TO HAVE SEEN IN THE FILM THAT WASN’T THERE? ALSO, WHAT IS YOUR OVERALL OPINION ON THE MOVIE?
 
GREG BEHRENDT: I never read the book and I hear it’s really good. I wrote it, but I’ve never gone back to read it. Is it good? Is there stuff in there, because there seemed like it had — it’s got the title. They covered a lot of it. What I was really more pleased about was the — I loved the exception and the rule. That’s been with me a good part of my life since my sobriety. At one point, I woke up one day and went, “I’m not the exception. Life is hard for me. I have to work at things. I’m not just going to go out and do stand-up and suddenly be Chris Rock. I might have to do shitty one-nighters for 15 years.”

I realized that when you look at life and you don’t think of yourself as the exception, and you don’t wait to be the exception, you get more of what you want than when you’re hoping something will just show up. And the fact that they took that and used that in the movie so well made me really happy, because I think it’s one of the things in the book that got the least amount of attention when we were first doing press for it.
 
Q: DO YOU PLAN TO DO A SEQUEL? WILL THERE BE A SECOND BOOK?
 
GREG BEHRENDT: There is a second book, thank you. Wow! That is good! Pink talks about it in this month’s Seventeen, it’s called “The Break-Up,” because it’s broken, the smart girl’s break-up buddy. It’s how to get through a break-up.
 
 
Again, one of the underlying themes in the [first] book is “He’s just not that into you.” That’s the big message on the front [of the book]. Let’s not waste our time in relationships that don’t serve us. But, the reality of any relationship is you have two options:  stay in it and be miserable or say “I’m moving on.” But in moving on, you can say, “This is what I need, and if you can’t provide it, fine.”

And I have to tell you, in the five years that the book’s been out and the zillions of women that I run into and encounter, that certainly has been the case in a lot of places, where a woman basically sets her standards higher and says, “No offence, but I want to get married, and if that’s not what you’re interested in, I’m moving on.” Then the guy shows back up and says, “You’re not worth losing.” I mean, that’s a great story. We didn’t set out to ruin people’s lives, we set out to make them better, so whatever that solution is, that is certainly one of the ones we’ve seen. We’ve also seen women walk away, be alone, and be just fine with it.
 
Q: KEN, WAS IT DIFFICULT TO DIRECT A MOVIE WITH SO MANY LEADING CHARACTERS?
 
KEN KWAPIS: Well, let me talk about characters and then actors. When I read the script, I had the wonderful experience of feeling like I could relate to all nine leading characters, male or female, in the sense that I’ve made a lot of the same mistakes. I feel like I’ve experienced a lot of the same things or, in some cases, wanted to experience some of those things. So it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to juggle all these stories and keep each of them compelling so that you’d be happy wherever you were, with whichever character.

In terms of the personalities, it’s less about ego and personality and more about the fact that these are nine different people who have nine very different approaches to the craft. And to just pull one out of the hat — Justin Long is remarkably gifted at improvisation and Ginnifer Goodwin comes from a completely classical background and is stage trained. So what was challenging was figuring out how — those people have to really spark and make two diametrically opposed processes work together. But again, that’s what makes it work so well too.
 
Q: GREG, WHEN YOU WROTE THE BOOK, DID YOU EVER THINK IT WOULD RESONATE THE WAY IT DID?
 
GREG BEHRENDT: Well, to be honest about it, I said it to somebody at work, but Liz Tuccillo was the reason it’s a book. Liz was the one who felt it needed to be written, and then with much convincing from my wife as well, I got forced into making it a book. It was just one of those things where it was an idea that as a guy it seemed self-evident, a lot of it. And then we sat down, and it seemed that whenever I answered the questions honestly, as though I was addressing my sister, which is really who that book is written to — it’s only written to one person, it’s written to my sister. That’s how I talk to her, because I don’t know everybody. But I would stay to my sister, “That guy’s a dipshit, so let’s move on.” That’s genuinely the way that the book came out. I had no idea. My hope was that it would get into Urban Outfitters and be around for a Christmas and then I could point to my buddies and go, “Dude, I wrote that pink book.” And then I’d go do stand-up. This is like a gift bag, and the fact that anyone wanted to make a movie out of it — they could have made a western out of it – so either way — yeah, it really is kind of great, so no, this is all very exciting.
 
Q: HOW DID YOUR CAMEO COME ABOUT, AND DID YOU PICK THE CHARACTER THAT YOU PLAYED?
 
GREG BEHRENDT: No, it was selected for me, and it was the hardest day of work I’ve ever done. I find acting challenging. I found that scene challenging, but it was fun just to be a part of it. I’ve known Nancy for a while, so it was great. It was fun and just getting to meet everybody, and I have a good arching eyebrow. And it was used to its best effect, so it was great. It was really fun.
 
KEN KWAPIS: Both Greg and Liz are in the film and both play ministers presiding over weddings.
 
Q: NANCY, DID YOU LEARN ANYTHING FROM THESE RELATIONSHIP CASTING SESSIONS THAT YOU DID? ARE ACTORS’ LIVES ANY MORE DRAMATIC THAN ANYBODY ELSE’S?
 
NANCY JUVONEN: You know what? They aren’t. And I felt like a lot of the press yesterday, with a lot of the people I was hearing, they kept saying, “Well, pretend you’re normal and you had a heartbreak,” and I kept thinking — they are normal, and they think they’re normal — you know what I mean? So I think there’s a high school quality to Hollywood and you sort of date within your school a lot of times, but there are all of these problems [and they] were all relatable to everybody, even the most gorgeous. Even Scarlett has had that little heart broken and you have to do that in order to relate.
 
Q: NANCY, YOU’VE WORKED WITH DREW BARRYMORE FOR A LONG TIME. HOW HANDS ON WAS SHE WITH THIS PROJECT?
 
NANCY JUVONEN:  She was medium hands on, because she knew how — I was the frantic person to get this thing. I mean, you could hardly have a conversation where I wasn’t trying to pitch what I thought his movie should be. And she was tenaciously going after “Grey Gardens” which was a struggle for her to get, because it’s different for her, and to direct “Whip It!” So we sort of shadowed each other’s project. She was directing and doing this really challenging acting role which was what she needed to do for herself, and myself, I needed to make this movie. So, both.
 
Q: NANCY, WHAT’S THE ULTIMATE LESSON YOU WANT PEOPLE TO WALK AWAY WITH? ALSO, IS IT SUPPOSED TO BE THIS EASY TO FALL IN LOVE WHEN IT’S REAL?
 
NANCY JUVONEN: Yes! Oh, I love that question. I think so. I thought you were going to say, “Was it supposed to be this hard? and I was going to say, “No, it’s not.”
 
GREG BEHRENDT: My experience has been, and that’s why I wrote the book in a lot of ways too, because I’m crazy in love with my wife, and it’s easy. It’s remarkably easy, and it’s adult. It feels like it’s really without trying. It’s boring to talk about because there’s no story, there’s no getting drunk and hanging out of windows and screaming and setting things on fire and crying. You know, it’s interesting — I had nothing to do with this script and I was seeing it girl where she was at the Chateau [Marmont] and I had to hide in the closet when her boyfriend came by for half an hour. So, I’ve been there and I know it’s not supposed to be like that. I know you’re not supposed to be in closets. I know that. I think we all have learned that. It should be easy and fun because that’s what sets you up to spend the rest of your life creating things together.
 
NANCY JUVONEN: Yes. And also the biggest hope would be that universality of love — we’re all in it, we’ve all been pursued and been in pursuit of and are trying to make it work, and I think that this panel happens to be really happily married, but we took a lot of leaps to get there. But I think it took a lot of struggle to get there which is almost a victory and it’s so much more fun. Thank god I fell on my face and went for the worst guys ever in order to recognize somebody who was good for me, where I could be the exception.

So I kind of do feel like you get to be the exception, but generally you should consider yourself the rule, because as Greg said, if you’re waiting around for Mr. Right to come by and you’re not actively sort of just trying somehow to be involved in this thing you’re after, you’re never going to learn anything. So I look around — this is the most fun movie to talk about because we’re all there --- it’s so fun to talk about love and what this guy did and what you did to try and get there. I mean, I could talk about it forever. We’re doing a sequel, not a sequel, but we’re going in on another script called “How To be Single,” because we have so many stories left, and we can’t stop. (Laughs)
 
Q: I THINK THERE WAS AN INTERESTING CHOICE MADE OF RESTRAINT, TO TALK ABOUT LOVE AND NOT NECESSARILY MAKE LOVE EQUAL SEX. THANKS TO THE KNOCKED UPS AND OTHER JUDD APAT0W-RELATED MOVIES, VERY GRAPHIC SEX HAS BECOME PART OF THE ROMANTIC COMEDY GENRE NOW. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE CHOICE OF NOT NECESSARILY LEAVING THAT OUT, BUT LETTING THE AUDIENCE FILL IN THE BLANKS?
 
KEN KWAPIS: Clearly the emotional content of this story is what we wanted to explore, not that sexual attraction isn’t a huge part of it, but that’s not where this film lives.
 
MARC SILVERSTEIN: I think attraction is, but I just absolutely hate sex scenes in movies. What story is being advanced here? Why are we watching this other than just to see someone naked? I can watch that online later, but when I’m watching a movie, I’m not sure why it’s there.
 
ABBY KOHN: Right. And in this movie, we weren’t going for the comedy like in a graphic, comic sex scene.
 
MARC SILVERSTEIN: The only real sex we were talking about was between Bradley’s character and Scarlett’s character, and for that it was more about the ramifications of it.

ABBY KOHN: And the building up to it which I think could be sexy without full on.
 
MARC SILVERSTEIN: And part of the fun of writing the script was we’d never worked in this sort of puzzle-like structure before. We’re used to writing where you have to go from A to B to C to D and kind of connect all the dots. In this one, you didn’t have to so much, so it was fun, especially for that story, to be A to D — like, oh, they talked on the phone! They’ve gone this far! You don’t have to see it, which was kind of like — there’s a lot of fun in what we don’t show, I think in this movie as well.
 
Q: VALENTINE’S DAY IS COMING UP, SO GREG, AS THE RELATIONSHIP GURU OF TODAY, ARE YOU INTO VALENTINE’S DAY OR NOT AND WHY?

GREG BEHRENDT: Let me field the relationship guru thing first. I wrote two books about getting out of relationships so that’s what I know. Don’t be in them when they’re crappy. I don’t love Valentine’s Day because it puts pressure…it sets up a false expectation and expectation is where we always go wrong in relationships and then people use it as a standard bearer really more to like, “Well, if you don’t get me this on this particular day…” Those sort of situations are what break relationships down, so I’m not a fan of it really.

Q: SO WHAT DO YOU DO ON THE 14TH?

GREG BEHRENDT: I ignore my wife. (Laughs) I don’t know. It just sort of comes and goes. I love my wife. I send her flowers just ‘cause. It sounds corny but we just don’t…she doesn’t have an expectation. She doesn’t want it. So we either do something because we were motivated to eat sugar or we don’t, but yeah, it just sort of comes and goes for me.

Q: JENNIFER ANISTON AND BEN AFFLECK’S CHARACTERS ARE VERY INTERESTING AND SEEM SO REAL. CAN YOU COMMENT ON THAT?

KEN KWAPIS: Well it was our goal, not just with Jennifer’s character, but with all nine leading characters, to keep everyone real -- and obviously it starts with the script -- but in terms of lighting choices, make-up choices, costume choices, and by the way, with the full enthusiasm of the cast. The goal was to put characters on the screen that would be as relatable as possible and one of the tricky things was taking such a group of popular and glamorous people and making them as assessable as possible. How do you take someone like Jennifer Aniston and put her in a role so that someone in the audience can say, “Oh my god, that’s me!”? So again, it starts with the script. It starts with avoiding a lot of the cliché ideas in terms of how people sound when they’re dealing with relationship issues, but it extends to every aspect of the production.

Q: DO YOU THINK AMERICAN WOMEN TALK A LOT ABOUT DATING?

KEN KWAPIS: Absolutely. I mean, I have a woman friend who will spend two hours composing a 10-word text mail and then send it and spend the next two hours obsessing over what she sent. This is someone who grew up with me in the Midwest. The sense of analysis and wanting to talk over and keep covering the same ground, I don’t think it’s particular to any city or any coast.

Q: GREG, IS THERE ANY FUTURE FOR THE BRAND “SEX AND THE CITY”? IS THAT SOMETHING THAT YOU MIGHT BE INVOLVED IN?

GREG BEHRENDT: No, I worked on the TV show as a consultant only so I was not as big a part of the show as Liz or someone like that, but at this point, no.

“He’s Just Not That Into You” opens in theaters on February 6th.