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 PRODUCTION
NOTES
How
to Deal is the story of 17-year-old Halley Martin, who has been
convinced by the outrageous relationships around her that the whole
concept of true love is vastly overrated. “Halley’s
parents are recently divorced. Her sister’s getting married,
and she’s convinced they’re not in love at all,”
says the film’s star, Mandy Moore, who at 19 years already
has three Platinum-selling albums and two successful feature films
(A Walk to Remember, The Princess Diaries) under her belt. Moore
adds that Halley’s best friend Scarlett, “with whom
she made a pact that they were not going to fall in love, betrays
her and falls head-over-heels for a new guy. So, that solidifies
Halley’s view on love - it doesn’t exist.”
How
to Deal is a story about love in all its forms: parental love, romantic
love, sibling love, friendship and intergenerational love. Moore
considers herself “a pretty romantic person,” she explains.
“I believe in love and falling in love at a young age, and
so I go against the grain. I think the exact opposite of what Halley
thinks in the film.”
Moore
was excited at the chance to play someone different from herself,
yet with qualities from which she could learn. “Halley’s
story is so accessible,” says the actress. “I think
she’s a really important person for girls my age to see go
through this pretty huge change throughout the course of the movie.”
Director
Clare Kilner was delighted to cast Moore in the role of Halley Martin.
“Halley is an investigator who’s curious about people.
She sees beauty in the mundane and is a great observer of life.
Mandy has that quality as well. She is fascinated by people and
loves to watch them. She approaches her work with honesty, simplicity
and a real passion.”
Inevitably,
Halley herself falls in love. “She meets that one quirky guy,
Macon Forrester, who has the same philosophy about love. And for
some reason they’re the right combination. Macon and Halley
find something to learn from each other, and feel very protective
of one another. It’s almost as if they say to each other,
‘I’m not going to hurt you and you’re not going
to hurt me, so everything will be fine. We’re not really in
a relationship. We’re friends who occasionally hang out or
make out, or whatever.’”
Trent
Ford (Gosford Park) plays Macon, whose budding friendship with Halley
turns her preconceived notions of love inside out. “Macon
sees something in Halley that really strikes a chord with him, and
he’s not afraid to go after her,” comments producer
William Teitler. “What happens between them is something that
surprises them both. They earn their relationship throughout the
course of the film.”
How
to Deal was the “first film that I really wanted to do for
myself,” says Ford. “I wanted the part and the challenges
it presented.”
Surrounding
the character of Halley is a collection of heartbroken and hopelessly
in-love souls. Allison Janney, the acclaimed star of the hit NBC
series “The West Wing,” stars as Halley’s mom,
Lydia. “Lydia is a woman whose husband has left her and she
has to deal with the rest of her life by herself or wherever,”
says Janney. “She tries to hold her family together and be
a great mother and yet underneath that she just feels she’ll
never be loved again.”
Janney
describes herself as someone “drawn to characters going through
life-changing experiences. Lydia feels that she’ll be alone
for the rest of her life and she’s terrified,” the actress
explains. “And all of us have that fear, so I related to her
fear of being an older woman who’s faced with being alone.
My heart went out to her.”
“Allison
is a brilliant and funny actress who is very truthful and finds
comedy in a very honest place,” says director Clare Kilner.
“She’s the ‘adult’ anchor of the film.”
Peter
Gallagher, the versatile star of films like The Player and sex,
lies and videotape, plays Len, Lydia’s ex-husband, who runs
off with a young and buxom reporter, and, through his efforts to
be “cool,” proves to be a constant source of mortification
for his daughter, Halley. “Len is definitely on the on-ramp
towards a mid-life crisis,” says Gallagher. “But he
views this period as a good time in his life, and he’s trying
to enjoy himself. Halley thinks Len really screwed up a good thing
when he left her mother, and on top of that he hasn’t really
been there much for Halley during a tumultuous time in her life.”
“Len’s
a cad, but you could also love him and understand why Lydia would
still have feelings for him,” says producer Erica Huggins.
“It seemed like a cool idea that Peter should play Len.”
The
story’s realistic take on a teenage girl’s life sparked
Gallagher’s creative interest. “I liked the fact that
this coming-of-age story was told in a realistic way with humor,
but also with a willingness to expose the complexity of these problems,”
says the actor. “The story does not burden kids watching into
thinking that problems can be resolved easily and seamlessly. It
treats issues with dimension and reality.”
Alexandra
Holden (The Hot Chick) portrays Halley’s best friend, Scarlett,
who completes the triangle of friends at the center of the teenage
story. Holden felt a deep connection to the material immediately.
“It was such a real slice of life. It was a story that lots
of different people could relate to, and I personally related to
Scarlett,” says the actress. “Scarlett is forced to
grow up quickly during the course of the story. She begins looking
up to Halley, but by the end of the film comes to realize that there
are qualities in herself that are worth valuing as well.”
“Scarlett
is a really amazing, kind-hearted, wonderfully positive character,”
adds Mandy Moore. “She’s cheerful and always approaches
every situation with a positive spirit. At first, Halley’s
the one in control of the relationship. She makes the decisions,
and Scarlett listens and agrees with everything. But they both change.
Halley realizes Scarlett is really smart and that she’s lucky
to have a friend that loves her as much as Scarlett does.”
The
off-screen friendship between Moore and Holden also blossomed during
the course of production. “Alex brings so much to the role,”
comments Moore. “She has charisma and confidence, and this
smile that lights up the screen; it’s just contagious. She’s
someone I’ll be friends with for a long time.”
The
filmmakers credit casting director Avy Kaufman for populating the
film with faces and personalities that bring authenticity to the
supporting roles. After casting across the U.S. and in Canada, the
filmmakers brought together an ensemble cast composed of relative
newcomers and established actors. “Each of the principal actors
had to be right, or it would erode the authenticity of the project,”
comments producer William Teitler. “We were very lucky to
assemble the cast that we did.”
Director
Clare Kilner had a clear idea about the qualities she sought in
the actors. “This film has moments of comedy, but I also wanted
the actors to be very honest. Each of the characters has a passion
to try and understand where they are in their life. They have a
concern about where they’re going to be in the next ten years.”
Rounding
out the ensemble cast, Connie Ray plays Scarlett’s mother,
Marion, and Dylan Baker appears as Lydia’s new beau, Steve.
Mary Catherine Garrison, who plays Halley’s older sister,
Ashley, impressed director Clare Kilner with her “honesty,
humor and physicality.”
Mackenzie
Astin, who plays Ashley’s uptight fiancé Lewis, “just
blew us away,” Kilner explains. “The character of Lewis
could have easily veered into farce and we didn’t want to
go that way. He approached Lewis with a truthfulness that really
appealed to me.”
For
the role of the pot-smoking, straight-talking Grandma Halley, the
filmmakers chose veteran actress Nina Foch, who was nominated for
an Academy Award for her performance in the 1954 film Executive
Suite and whose film credits include
An American in Paris, The Ten Commandments and Spartacus.
Two
families provide a stark contrast in How to Deal -- Ashley’s
family, the Martins, and Lewis’ family, the Warshers. “The
Warshers and the Martins are definitely from opposite sides of the
tracks,” says Mackenzie Astin. “Lewis’ family
hails from the Old South, so they’re old school in that respect.
The Martins are much more modern, and they’ve got a distinct
matriarchal quality to their family. It’s about as far from
the Warshers as you can get.”
“It
used to be that movies would depict perfect families that would
make you feel bad about your own family,” says Allison Janney.
“People can relate to the Martins and Warshers, because we
all come from dysfunctional families whether we’re aware of
it or not. We’re all trying to get through our lives, and
find some joy, peace and love somewhere. These characters are also
trying to find that. That’s why I really relate to it.”
The
film deals with parent/child relationships in a similar truthful
fashion. In the Martin family, Lydia favors Halley, while Ashley
feels closer to her father Len. According to Janney, “Lydia
has a closer relationship with Halley than with Ashley, because
she sees a lot of herself in Halley.” Mary Catherine Garrison
agrees, “Ashley has to deal with the fact that she’s
very different from her mother and Halley. She had a lot in common
with her father, who no longer lives with them. Ashley doesn’t
feel appreciated for the ways that she is different, and a lot of
what she’s going through has to do with claiming who she is,
and not apologizing for it or being ashamed of it.”
Both
Moore and Garrison developed a great rapport with their onscreen
parents, Janney and Gallagher. “Allison is one of the greatest
people,” enthuses Mandy Moore. “She’s wonderful
to work with. She is the bar to reach. I feel so honored and privileged
that I got the chance to work with her.” Janney returns the
compliment: “I’m so impressed with Mandy, who is brave
and so lovely. I love acting with her; she jumps right in, and likes
to improv before the scene starts. She’s very game to all
the challenges that movie acting has to offer.”
The
process of bringing How to Deal to the screen began several years
ago, when producer William Teitler read the novels, Someone Like
You and That Summer by Sarah Dessen, and was immediately struck
by the way that he connected with the books’ “emotional
intensity and honest portrayal of family life.” A parent of
two daughters, Teitler was inspired to make a film that was as “emotionally
true and as accurate to the way that teenagers experience life.”
Teitler
and his producing partner, Chris Van Allsburg, had a longstanding
production deal with Interscope Communications before the company
re-established itself as Radar Pictures. Teitler optioned both books
through the deal at Interscope, aiming to develop the two into a
single moving story. Teitler approached writer Neena Beber after
seeing her two-character play, “Misreadings,” featuring
a razor-sharp, cynical high schooler and her teacher, and also taking
into account her work on MTV’s cult-hit “Daria.”
“Her writing is so sharp and cynical, and yet human and funny
at the same time,” he comments. “She has the combination
of great writing skills, a keen sense of comic irony that was required
for the character Halley, and also a deep understanding of the teenage
audience. Neena doesn’t write down to them; she is able to
get inside the mind of the teenage protagonist.”
“It
was an interesting challenge to take something that already existed,”
says Beber. “Sarah Dessen had already created a world that
I had to enter into, rather than create. I was almost working as
a translator at first.”
Beber
and Teitler started by making an extensive outline of everything
they wanted to include from each novel. They knew that the endpoint
would be the wedding of Ashley and Lewis and the birth of Scarlett’s
baby. The challenge was to find a way to connect the points over
the story’s nine-month period. During the course of the 3-4
years they spent developing the script, Beber and Teitler also added
scenes that did not appear in either of the books such as the memorable
Thanksgiving dinner scene where the Martin and Warsher families
meet for the first time.
Teitler
credits Beber with finding a way to make the new material fit the
tone and feeling of the original. “Sarah Dessen found it odd
and funny to read her characters saying things that seemed completely
true to their personalities, and yet wasn’t said in her books,”
says Teitler. “That’s a great compliment for Neena.”
Producer
Erica Huggins, who also serves as executive vice president of production
for Radar Pictures, has high hopes for the project. “This
is a romance between Halley and Macon, but secondarily this is a
multi-generational ensemble movie,” she says. “We love
Neena’s writing – it’s sophisticated and authentic
at the same time.”
As
the option on the books loomed, the filmmakers knew it was do or
die. Around the same time, Huggins had a general meeting with Mandy
Moore soon after Moore had completed filming her first starring
role in A Walk to Remember. As the meeting ended, Huggins told Moore
about How to Deal and the role of the spirited and independent Halley
Martin. After reading the script, Moore responded enthusiastically
and accepted the part.
With
Moore attached, David Linde of Focus Features (formerly Good Machine
International) came on board to finance the film and then Radar
brought on New Line Cinema as the domestic distributor. It was time
to search for a director.
A few
years prior, Erica Huggins and William Teitler had the opportunity
to see a film called Janice Beard: 45 wpm and meet its director,
Clare Kilner. Kilner and her comedy about a working class woman
left an impression on both of them. Teitler comments that Kilner’s
“emotional authenticity, original sense of humor, unique point
of view, and strong woman’s voice were appropriate and big
plusses for the project.”
“I’m
attracted to projects about family dysfunction, people struggling
to live their lives and learning how to love and who to love,”
Kilner notes. “I’m also interested in the different
generations of women in the story – the grandmother, mother
and granddaughters and the little jealousies between them.”
The
film’s multi-generational appeal is also evident in its design.
Production designer Dan Davis describes the look of the film as
comprised of two different worlds: “There’s the regular
suburban world inhabited by the adults, and there’s the teenage
world that is more industrial and bleaker, with hard-edged landscapes,”
said Davis. Shooting took place in locations as varied as a school,
a water dam and the church where Ashley and Lewis’ wedding
takes place.
“This
film is set in contemporary America,” producer William Teitler
adds. “We didn’t want either a picture perfect, Norman
Rockwell look, or the typical dysfunctional look at suburbia, that
appears so often in film. We wanted a combination of a sense of
heightened reality, as well as something that felt classic and familiar.”
Costume
designer Alexandra Welker wanted to keep the look of the characters
as “real as possible.” For her, the costumes needed
to express what the characters were going through by focusing on
the texture of what made them interesting and, therefore, sympathetic
to an audience. From a practical standpoint, her task was made more
challenging because the story takes place over the course of a year.
“There’s the behind-the-scenes challenge of finding
clothes for each season while shooting in the summer, and there
is the story challenge of moving the characters through an entire
calendar year – seeing how they grow and change,” says
Welker.
Welker
did not want Halley to be the typical, cynical teen. “The
trick with Halley is that we were trying to express the fact that
she’s a very individual girl,” Welker notes. “She’s
a fully formed person in many ways. I felt that she expressed herself
through clothing that would look really cool, but not like she was
making an effort at it. She’s fairly oblivious of fashion.
I concentrated on color palette and texture and mixing things in
interesting ways.”
The
film features two wedding sequences. Playing a bride for the first
time, Mary Catherine Garrison was surprised by the feelings that
the wedding scenes evoked in her. Her uneasiness started in the
hair/make-up trailer and continued up to the staged ceremony. “It’s
a traumatic experience. First the hair and make-up takes a long
time, and then you put on this wedding cake of a dress. It was beautiful,
but it was huge. Then we’re in a huge church filled with extras.
The organ starts playing the bridal march, and everyone stands up
and looks at me. I started laughing; I was shaking like a leaf.
I was panic-stricken and got flushed.
I was walking down the aisle, and it felt so real.”
“I
saw Mackenzie Astin at the altar,” Garrison continues, “and
he had this wild-eyed frozen smile I will never forget. In the back
of my mind I kept saying, ‘I just met him.’ Because
I really felt like they were marrying us for the sake of the movie.
It was just so funny. And then we found out later that the actor
who was playing the minister really is a minister. So literally
I thought we were married until I found out that you need to sign
a wedding license!”
While
none of the cast and crew actually got married, throughout the two-month
shoot in Toronto, they did become a very close-knit group. Trent
Ford likens the atmosphere among the actors and crew to the summer
camp experience. “Coming away to Toronto is a wonderfully
organic experience because it brings everybody together, removed
from the LA backyard,” Ford says. “Although we have
very tight schedules and budgets to work with, it’s like summer
camp. We stay at a hotel together and we spend time together. This
crew got on better than any crew I’ve ever been on a film
set with, and that to me is the most important thing about making
a film: the spirit in which this film has been conceived and the
intent we put behind it.”
The
actors all give credit to director Clare Kilner for the easy atmosphere
on the set. According to Dylan Baker, “Clare is from the school
of English directors that make themselves accessible. With Clare
you can go up and ask her a question, or she’ll come up to
you and talk to you about something that isn’t even connected
to the movie. Yet she has a firm grasp of what she wants and allows
everybody to do their work and get it done.”
Moore
refers to her as ‘Captain Clare’ and says, “It
doesn’t get any better than Clare. Regardless of how long
it takes to set up lighting and get everything else right, she always
comes up to you before a take and gets you in the right frame of
mind. Since movies don’t shoot in sequential order, it can
be confusing shooting two or three completely different scenes a
day. So it’s really helpful and wonderful to know that there’s
someone on the other side of the camera who cares about your performance.
She’s always smiling no matter how stressed and pressed we
are to get a shot. She’s just always there to say, ‘we’re
gonna get everything…no worries’.”
The
film’s exploration of love is one that Kilner feels will resonate
with audiences. “The film has a universal appeal because it
treats fundamental life issues in a smart, funny way.” Producer
Erica Huggins agrees: “How to Deal is a movie about issues
that teenagers and their moms will find appealing. Clare felt that
immediately when she read the script. We all love the idea that
is underlined in this movie – that “life happens,”
but if you have a sense of humor about it, you can find your way
out.” |
