OUT& OUT


The director and stars of All Over the Guy hope to bring their gay-themed romantic comedy to a multiplex near you.

By Rod Armstrong

There's a charming romantic comedy opening at a theater near you called All Over the Guy. It details the similarities and differences in the romantic travails of two couples — one straight, one gay — with a clever script full of knowing details and four winning performances. It won't be easy for a small-scale picture like this to go up against big-budgeted, star-powered fare like America's Sweethearts, but we'll let you in on a little secret — Julie Davis' film is the best romantic comedy out there right now.

After the film closed the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival to wild applause, four of the principal folks behind All Over the Guy — director Julie Davis, writer and star Dan Bucatinsky, and co-stars Richard Ruccolo and Sasha Alexander — joined Reel.com for a provocative conversation about marketing gay-themed movies, gay/straight friendships, the challenges facing a low-budget production, and how interviewers should never ask straight actors, "How did you ever possibly manage to play a gay character?"

Q: I read that you changed the main subject of the play from a straight relationship to a gay relationship. Besides discussing the reasons for doing so, can you talk about how you think it strengthened the movie?

Dan Bucatinsky: I adapted it into a gay relationship rather than a straight one for a lot of reasons. When I first started thinking about adapting it into a movie, it seemed like the movie version of that play would be something that we had all seen already; it was terrain that had been charted. When it was suggested to me to make the main woman's character into a guy, it seemed like making a mainstream movie — making the same story — but with two men. It seemed more relevant, more current, more contemporary, more personal. All those things motivated the change, in addition to the fact that there's a built-in gay audience for a movie like this, and when you make an independent movie like this, you can't guarantee that a straight romantic comedy will necessarily draw any particular demographic. There's too much competition from movies like Bridget Jones's Diary.

Q: And if you don't have a big star.

[After interviewer puts his foot in his mouth, the wildly talented and amazingly popular stars Sasha Alexander and Richard Ruccolo start muttering about killing their interlocutor for suggesting they are not prominent actors.]

DB: If you don't have a big star, you're really competing with the movies that do have big stars. In our case, America's Sweethearts. A movie with gay characters has a built-in audience and you can almost guarantee a particular return on the investment, so that's the financial reason.

Julie Davis: And there is no competition. There is no movie like this out there with two huge stars. A movie like All Over the Guy is never going to be competing with another movie like it made by Hollywood with someone like Brad Pitt.

Q: Did the play have two sets of couples?

DB: No. It was a two-character play. The voices of Brett and Jackie were just voice-overs on an answering machine, fixing them up. I created those characters for the movie, so they had actual presence.

Q: One of the most interesting things to me is that you have the straight couple lecturing the gay couple on their immaturity. There's a critique in there about the continued adolescence of gay men that I appreciated. It wasn't hammered over the head, but it was nice to have Brett and Jackie say, "We're admitting we like each other, so what's your problem?"

DB: I was really fascinated by the idea of not just what makes everybody similar and what everyone's issues are that are universal, but to touch a little bit on the differences and challenges of two guys getting to know each other, what makes two guys fall in love, and about the time clock for a man and a woman. There was something interesting to me about exploring a character like Jackie, who might have had fantasies of the knight in shining armor when she was in her early 20s, but as she gets closer to 30, she's thinking, "You know what? I want to have a family, I want to settle down, I want to meet a guy I love who's just a great guy who's going to make a great dad." There's a different set of pressures that can lead to a straight couple pushing themselves forward as opposed to two guys, who really only have each other and each other's issues to try to work through. When two guys get together, it's not because society is bringing them together and it's not because their parents are trying to get them to get married — except in the instance of my parents — to me, that was really interesting.

Adam [Goldberg] and I talked about it also, we had this interview for The Advocate where we were talking about the differences between gay relationships and straight relationships, and we found that there were very, very, very, very few [differences] in certain aspects, but there came that thing about marriage — Adam said that he would meet a woman and within a couple of dates, he could tell by the look in her eye if she wanted this to move forward, if she was looking to get married or not — and that's not something you see that much of in a gay relationship. Although, in the one we explore in the movie, one of the characters is clearly looking to settle down and one of them is looking to take it slow — or fast, depending on how you look at it.

Q: [To Sasha and Richard] What was intriguing to each of you about playing the characters after reading the script?

Sasha Alexander: When I first read the script, it really touched me. It was about people and didn't feel gimmicky, it felt real. It was about people that I knew and the character of Jackie in particular was interesting to me because I didn't feel like she was a typical fag hag, if I can say that. She wasn't someone who, in her relationship with Tom, didn't have a love life of her own.

Richard Ruccolo: We were talking before about the friendship between these two characters was really amazing because of the support and non-judgment. Here's Tom, who's an alcoholic, he's too easy, and Jackie tries to guide but never points her finger and says, "I'm not going to be your friend anymore if you don't change." Here's Tom on the other hand, with a friend who gets married too quickly and is pregnant and going to have this baby, and you see Tom struggling with, "Well, I don't know if I agree with it, but, hey, I'm here for you."

Q: Also, he's feeling like he's going to get left behind.

RR: That's exactly right; I'm glad you picked up on that. That's a subtle part of the film. He only says it after the fact, when he says, "I'm having abandonment issues." It's never hit over the head why he kind of takes a step back from everybody and everything. She was kind of the last straw; now he's left all by himself.

SA: When I finished reading the script, it seemed so universal — these characters, and these moments in their lives and friendships.

Q: And it's only now beginning to be explored from a gay angle. There's Will and Grace, and thank God your character wasn't as neurotic as Grace.

SA: [Interrupting incredulously] You didn't think my character was neurotic?

Q: She wasn't as neurotic as Grace. What is fascinating about this material is that the unique relationship that takes place between straight people and gay people is only just beginning to be explored.

DB: We were watching this documentary last night about female-to-male transsexuals on PBS. Someone said something on the show and it was such a truism about how men and women are so incredibly different — their biologies are completely different, their psychologies are incredibly different, it's really amazing that they can get together, and live together, and have a relationship.

SA: And expect to get along.

DB: I mean, everybody really should be gay. If you think about it, it makes so much more logical sense, maybe not for the future of society. JD: I totally disagree with that. I think female/female relationships are the most complicated. There's so much competition.

RR: I completely understand what Dan is saying and if I could find a woman that was exactly like my best male friend — I mean, I love the woman I'm with, but there are things that I do with my best friend that I can never do with my girlfriend.

DB: Don't get dirty on us.

JD: That's a people thing, because I don't feel that way at all.

SA: [Gracefully rescuing the discussion from its tangent] Back to relating to the movie, Eli and Tom's characters are like light and dark, they're so different, they wouldn't be best friends. We're often attracted to people who are opposite ourselves because they have qualities we want and vice versa.

JD: I think chemistry comes from sensing that another person will open up your childhood wounds.

DB: Ooh, that's good. That's this movie.

JD: I think if we all look at our relationships, we would probably all say that it's true. Those are the things that make the relationship difficult, but that's where the real sexual chemistry comes from. And that's what other people, on the outside, sometimes can't understand. "Oh, I don't know what they see in each other; they're so different."

Q: Friendships can do that, too.

[Hubbub of assent from group. Whether they're agreeing in order to be nice or not, we'll never know. Another tangent follows.]

Q: [Indicating Richard] When you were discussing your best friend, it made me think of Swingers and how nobody really discussed that it was a movie about heterosexual guys who love guys. They can't really relate to women.

RR: And they have all of these male friends.

DB: George Clooney is this famous bachelor because he cannot find a woman he can relate to; he just wants to be with his guy buddies. The guy's gay. You don't have to have sex to be gay. People think that being gay is all about sex; it's not. It's about wanting to hang out with your buds.

Q: What about all the gay men who predominantly hang around women?

SA: Yeah, what about that?

DB: I'm convinced that Adam and Eve — Adam was gay and Eve was straight. In a non-sexual way, it's the perfect relationship between two people who sort of understand each other in terms of what they're looking for in sexuality and what they're looking for in life.

JD: Why would Eve want to be around a man who didn't want her? Women have a huge need to be sexually desired.

Q: She has the snake.

DB: Adam was bi, so he could go either way. [To Julie] We'll talk; I have rewritten the Bible, by the way. I'm doing lectures on the weekends.

Q: Since you wrote the film, I'm assuming you're the one who hates In & Out. Was it difficult to play the character who is supposed to like it? DB: No, I don't hate In & Out. I was trying to find a film — in the play it was Thelma & Louise — that polarized communities. I remember when Thelma & Louise came out, it polarized the community. Women loved it because it was a feminist polemic, and men thought it was man-hating. In the play, I made the guy love the movie for being a feminist polemic and the woman hate it because it was so man-hating. She would say, "In that movie, men are pricks and women are victims."

For the movie, I wanted to find something mainstream that was kind of groundbreaking though still commercial. I wanted to have fun with a character that hated everything about the movie and another character that liked it. I always looked at In & Out as a tiny baby step for middle America. All the edges have been smoothed. It allowed the next movie to be made, the next movie to be a studio movie, which is going to be All Over the Guy. It was fun to write the passionate argument for both sides of the movie.

JD: Movies really polarize people.

Q: [To Julie] We never got a word from you on how you came to be involved with the movie.

JD: I got involved from a mutual friend who I worked with on a movie I did right before All Over the Guy. She had read the script and said, "I know a director who'd be perfect for this who I just worked with." I got the script, read it — at the time, Dan was trying to make it for $2.5 million. I said, "Great. I think I could do a good job with that. Call me when you get the money." A few months later, Dan called and said, "I think we're only going to get about a million," and I said, "Well, okay." A few months later he said, "Would you still do it if I only had $500,000 because I know you've done that before?"

DB: We had a meeting and I said, "If we do it for half a million, we lose Julie Davis. I'm just going to say that right now."

JD: I had already done that so many times; that's a very specific way of making movies. I thought, "You know what? I can't do what I need to do with that amount of money. I just don't want to do that again." Then he said, "Well, that's just going to be to get it in the can. We'll have more money for post-production," and I thought, "Well, it's such a great script and I love making movies, and I think you always have to work to get better, exercise that muscle." I really believe that it's all about the script and the story and casting the right actors. This was a bigger movie than the budget we had, and you do get into trouble because you can't do justice to certain things. You can't shoot on the right set. There was a scene where Richard got so angry where Eli and Tom are supposed to be walking out of a country club down a driveway.

RR: [Interrupts] And we couldn't do it. These are where the compromises come in. It's hard sometimes as an actor when you read it one way and you have planned how to do it, and Dan wrote it instinctually as dialogue to be spoken when one person was walking away and the other person was behind him, chasing him.

Q: It's the argument scene between Eli and Tom set on the steps at the club, right? I can see how it would be better to have them walking away from each other because it's so tense.

DB: A shot walking down the street would have been heaven, but it was just impossible.

RR: I did get really angry, but looking back with perspective, there was nothing we could have done.

JD: Orson Welles said, "Limitations inspire your creativity." You get to the root of what the piece is really about, you don't have any crutches, and you have to be inventive. It's a real challenge because a lot of directors who have a lot of toys don't have to be inventive, they just throw money at the screen, so it's exciting in that way. But it's frustrating when you know that you can make it better.

RR: There were so many locations built into the script. DB: And we shot them in only three places.

Q: Really?

DB: Well, there were a few more. It was great when we got the recording studio. They were talking about building something that looked like a recording studio and I said, "Absolutely not. The scene is just not going to work without being shot in a real voice-over studio." We shot six days in one person's house, using every corner of their house as a different location. Six days in another hous,e and six days in a third house. At least 15 of the 25 shooting days were in three locations, which is pretty amazing.

JD: And you have to plan it out beforehand. Audiences are sophisticated. "Are they going to be able to tell?" If they can see all that, they get distanced from the film.

RR: I remember reading the script, and calling up my agent going, "What is the budget on this thing?" I remember hearing the budget thinking, "How are they going to pull this off?"

SA: Watching the movie, I kept asking, "Where did you shoot that? Where did you shoot that?" It was all the same house.

DB: The country club was right outside the sliding doors of one of the houses. Just turn the camera around and we had a whole new location.

SA: Applause for all this to Julie Davis and our director of photography, Goran [Pavicevic].

JD: He had to be able to light it in a way that made it look like a different location. The production designer [Fanιe Aaron] as well is really important. If they don't dress everything properly, you can also tell. It's a real collaboration of, "How are we going to pull this off?"

RR: Even just throwing another exterior that's right across the street to make people think they're in a different house.

SA: That's Hollywood. Movie magic.

Q: Speaking of this, can any of you pick a scene or two that you're particularly proud of? Is there anything you'd change?

SA: I'm so proud of the movie. I'm so excited for people to see it; I love everybody's performance. I can't imagine it being tighter.

RR: I love the way it all turned out. Besides the love scene that I'm very proud about …

JD: [Interrupts] Yeah, there would have been more sex.

RR: The scene between Dan and me when we're fighting over the phone. It's a key part of the story where you see why these two should be together and how much they really do like each other, how much fun they have.

JD: That scene kind of wraps up the whole relationship — it's sexual, but it's playful. They have a really close rapport.

RR: It's really that whole scene.

DB: I have favorites that I like, based on the writing and stuff, I'm proud of as an actor. It's really different for me, but I'm thrilled with the finished product. Do I sound cocky?

SA: I love the furniture-store scene.

DB: I feel so lucky to have had the actors we had. It made the script much better than it was, it made the characters realer than they were on the page. I feel really fortunate. The chemistry between everyone is really there. RR: The one regret I would have is not having a scene with Adam.

SA: It is so hard to capture a relationship, without rehearsal, without time. I remember Rich and I jumped into a scene together on one of the first days of shooting, and we just had to go. You have to believe that these people have been friends for a really long time, and it's up to casting to hopefully put people together who will have that kind of rapport. If that happens, you're starting so much further along than most movies.

DB: As a writer, the way people criticize or snag or bust each other immediately lets you know that there's a history there, as opposed to movies where people say, "You know what? You're my best friend; you can tell me." The ability to tell someone something harsh can only come from an implication of love; you shouldn't say it.

Q: The battles are where the relationship lies.

DB: Yes.

Q: Let's talk about the marketing of gay-themed movies. By identifying a film as "gay," we all probably agree that it becomes marginalized. But, as you said, you have a built-in audience. Do you market it toward gay moviegoers and hope others will come? Do you present it in a more mainstream fashion?

JD: It's all about the distributor at this point. They decide how to market it, where to play the trailer, what theaters to show it in. They know they have to go after their main audience first, if it crosses over, has good word-of-mouth, good reviews, then it can build. It's kind of out of our hands. The movie is made; it is what it is, and you just hope that by word-of-mouth, it can attract the people who will appreciate it.

DB: I will say that Lions Gate has been very collaborative. I'm, like, the biggest noodge that they could possibly ever meet. I'm in their face every single day. I'm involved in every aspect of every marketing decision, and I get in their face all the time. We had a concept for the poster which they agreed to do — at first we thought we'd do two posters, one for the gay audience and one for the straight audience, but they couldn't afford two campaigns — so we decided to have a poster that had four pairs of feet coming out of the bed, three guys and one woman and the tag line was, "One girl plus three guys equals two couples. You do the math." Well, the MPAA wouldn't let us — we did a photo shoot, spent a lot of money, it was fantastic — and they wouldn't let us use the image because they thought it looked like group sex. We have now done a scaled-down version of that very same image, but I think that it's a tantalizing poster because it's inclusive and universal. It's like women and men, men and men, it's about relationships. So we've had some say about how we go about marketing this.

Q: What about Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice? I'm sure they marketed that movie with four people in bed, so what is the MPAA's problem?

DB: Well, that was in 1968, before the MPAA, but my publicist is sending pictures of the ad that got refused and the one-sheet for Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice which, by the way, is all four of them in bed together. The MPAA is five straight women — that's who decides what poster you can use. Those women — I don't know what kind of sex they're having, either none at all or really funky — but … you know, in the end ... we're trying to straddle both sides. I don't want to alienate the gay audience — we depend on it — we still want to include the crossover audience. In the end, the movie will be what it will be and it is word-of-mouth. We're in a lot of gay and lesbian film festivals, so the gay audience will come out for it.

Q: It's also about theaters keeping it long enough for word-of-mouth to spread.

JD: Theaters can't lose the money. If the movie comes out at a time when there are other films that will make money, there's absolutely no incentive for theaters to keep it showing.

SA: I've also heard rumors about studios that have deals with certain theater chains and they will blackmail those theaters into showing certain movies.

Q: The moviegoing public is being insulted when Pearl Harbor is put in six of the 12 theaters in a multiplex. And movies like All Over the Guy or something like Memento isn't showing there.

DB: That choice of movies should be at every multiplex in the country, but you need a distributor who feels strongly enough about it that they're willing to take a little bit of a loss until the movie kicks in. But it's a self-fulfilling prophecy — distributors think movies like this … and they think of Trick or Broken Hearts Club and how they performed. So they do the same campaign, it makes the same amount of money, and they say, "See, we told you." It's like, "Well, wait a minute. You marketed it the same way. Of course it's going to make the same amount of money. Why don't you put it in twice as many screens? Let's see what happens. Let's hold it for another week." Of course, you have the exhibitors who then have to agree to that strategy, but I was sort of hoping that All Over the Guy would be one of the choices at the multiplex, and I think it very well may be.

JD: It will be if does well at the art houses.

DB: We're doing everything we can, marketing-wise and promotion-wise — and luckily there's a cast of people willing to market this movie in the gay press and the straight press — to keep it from being a self-fulfilling prophecy and to cover all the audience bases.

Q: [To Richard] As long as you're willing to answer the "What did it take to play a gay character?" question repeatedly.

DB: Exactly. "What did it feel like to kiss a man?"

RR: I'm so happy that you're aware that that question has been asked of me 9,000 times. Thank you for that.

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