My Happy Days in Hollywood (40 page)

“Have you worked with her before?” said one of the producers.

“No,” I said.

“Do you know her?” asked another male producer.

“Never heard of her. But she’s the only woman on the list, so I’m going with her,” I said.

“How can you hire someone you don’t know?” asked a producer.

“It doesn’t matter. I just need a woman in the mix,” I said.

Diana, a striking, no-nonsense single mom with two kids, turned out to be a great producer. I worked so well with her that I hired her to produce my next movie,
New Year’s Eve
. Also, my own executive assistant, Heather Hall, another top-notch lady, got her first associate producing credit on
Valentine’s Day
, and was a great help to me on the film.

Valentine’s Day
, a romantic patchwork of stories about singles and couples all seeking love on Cupid’s holiday, came along at the time I was considering a movie called
Senior Class
with Bette Midler.
Senior Class
was about a couple who meet and fall in love while residing in an assisted living facility. We were trying to pair Bette with Richard Dreyfuss, Anthony Hopkins, or Jack Nicholson. I liked the script because I thought I could weave in a scene that would feature a senior softball league, like the one I play in in Los Angeles. However, the deal for the film was moving along too slowly for the high-energy Bette. She got bored and decided to do her act in Las Vegas instead. With
Senior Class
on hold, I jumped at the script for
Valentine’s Day
because it was a done deal, ready to go with financing in place.

In my opinion the multistar movie concept did not start with
He’s Just
Not
That Into You
. The movie
Love Actually
was the first and most famous example of what you could achieve if you asked a bunch of big stars to work only a few days on a major motion picture. Movies can take weeks to film, so from an actor’s perspective shooting only a few days is appealing. I knew that the key to the ensemble cast was to get a few big names to commit early; then others would follow. I picked up the phone and called the biggest movie star I knew.

“Julia, will you be in
Valentine’s Day
? It would really help me, and it’s only for three days,” I said.

Yes was her answer. It had been ten years since our last film. She talked to her agent who later told me she had put it this way: “For someone who gave me my career, I can give him three days.” That made me smile. Before we signed Julia, many of the actors we liked turned us down. When word got out that Julia was in, suddenly actors were reconsidering their decisions. In fact, it was raining famous actors and actresses.

Another personal phone call I made was to Anne Hathaway, whose career had skyrocketed after our time together on
The Princess Diaries 1
and
2
. Anne wanted to meet about the script because in the first draft her character was not as well-defined as some of the others. This is often the problem with ensemble scripts. Some of the characters are better-written than others. Anne and I met at Spago. She recalled that the first time we met when she wasn’t even twenty years old I had taken her to the Lakeside Country Club, but now Spago was much more show business, and more her style, too.

During our lunch we decided that her character’s secret would be that she moonlighted as a phone sex girl. Anne suggested that she do the calls with different accents, and I liked that idea. Anne always comes up with great details to further develop characters. A more difficult decision was what male to cast as her costar.

She’d had to kiss more than six actors before we chose Chris Pine for
The Princess Diaries 2
. I didn’t want her to have to go through all that random kissing again, so I cut to the chase for
Valentine’s Day
. “So in this picture who do you want to kiss?” I asked.

Anne came up with an inspired choice: Topher Grace, who had
starred in
That ’70s Show
. Anne said she had once had a crush on him and she thought he would be good for the part. I met with Topher and thought he made a nice match with Anne, too. After Anne said yes, we also got Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx. I had never met Jamie, so I came right out and asked him how he preferred to be directed. He said that he had done a lot of jobs, including acting, singing, and playing the piano in rich people’s houses. But he said in his heart he was, and always would be, a stand-up comic. So I treated him like all the other comics I had met while I was working my way up through the nightclubs of New York. He didn’t need a lot of preparation or direction; he just needed me to say “action.”

Another actor I met for the first time on
Valentine’s Day
was Ashton Kutcher. Our producers arranged for me to talk to him while he was in France.

“Thank you, Ashton, for calling from France,” I said.

“France?” he asked.

“Yes. Paris, I assume?” I said.

“I’m not in France,” he said. “I’m on Highland Avenue in Hollywood.”

“Really?” I replied. “My office is nearby. Let’s meet in person.”

We hung up the phone and met nearby. That’s typical show business logistics.

There are some actors you just click with immediately, and that’s the way I felt with Ashton and his costar in the film, George Lopez. The two worked as colleagues in a flower shop owned by Ashton’s character. The shop was called Siena Bouquet, after my granddaughter Siena LaGambina, which made her father, Doug, laugh. The scenes with Ashton and George were easy to direct because there was natural rapport between them. It was a relief for me as a director that working with them came so easily. The rest of the time I was introducing myself to a new and different actor every other day.

In
Valentine’s Day
we also had a senior romantic story line, and for it we cast Academy Award winner Shirley MacLaine and, of course, Hector Elizondo. For many years I have been carrying around a script I wrote called
Time Step
, which is the story of my mother’s life. I have always thought that Shirley MacLaine would be perfect to
star in the movie. We were never able to make a deal and get a studio interested, but I still carry around the script. So I looked forward to working with her in
Valentine’s Day
. Directing Shirley is a unique experience. She operates on a more spiritual level than most people. One day I got a call from the studio to say that Shirley wasn’t happy with her paycheck. I called her up and said, “What’s wrong? You don’t like your deal?” And she said, “Those are not lucky numbers for me. The money is fine. I just need the numbers at the end of the check to be 131.” It wasn’t about financial compensation but about lucky numbers. We changed the numbers and Shirley was happy.

Shirley also loved working with Hector, as do most actresses because he is such a generous acting partner. One night we shot until 4:00
A.M
. in a cemetery in Hollywood that projects movies on a big screen. As we were walking through the cemetery rehearsing the scene, Shirley suddenly turned to me and said, “Is there anyone you want me to contact?” gesturing at the rows of grave sites. “I don’t think so,” I said. “They all look pretty busy.” You never know what Shirley is going to say next.

In one scene Shirley had to confess to her husband that she had had an affair. The scene was stalled because Shirley was having trouble with her motivation. Why would a woman confess such a thing on Valentine’s Day? Hector agreed with Shirley, but I didn’t have an answer for either of them. Shirley was a pro, however, and found her way through the scene. Several days later Hector called me up and said he had a reason for us: He said the wife confessed because the couple was going to renew their vows. She felt compelled to confess so she could celebrate her vows with a clear heart and conscience. Shirley and I liked that reasoning. We didn’t have money to do a re-shoot, so instead we added some voice-over material that explained their plans to renew their vows. Shirley, Hector, and I were all happy with the way the story line turned out. Hector’s perseverance is another reason I value his friendship so much.

Sometimes you meet an actor on a movie that you just know you are going to be lifelong friends with. As with Hector Elizondo and Julia Roberts, I knew it when I met Jennifer Garner on
Valentine’s Day
. I knew her work and had read about her marriage to Ben
Affleck, but I had never met her in person. She was beautiful, but you could tell that inside she was a regular girl from West Virginia, where she was raised. She became one of my closest friends on the set. We talked a lot about marriage, kids, and divorce. There was nothing fake or pretentious about her. The first day we met she blurted out, “Garry, look at my boobs! I’m still breast-feeding, so you probably don’t want me to take my clothes off in the movie.”

Jennifer has told me many funny stories, including one about her daughter Violet. Since birth her daughter knew her only as Jennifer Affleck, which is Violet’s last name. One day Violet came home from a playdate and said to her mom, “My friend said there is a girl named Jennifer Garner living here with us. Do you know her?” She said, “My name is Jennifer Garner when I act. That’s me.” She said when Violet was very small she thought Jennifer worked in a trailer because she spent so much time in the makeup trailer on the set!

In
Valentine’s Day
Jennifer was cast as a woman who was unknowingly having an affair with a married man. She had to play a sweet and likable schoolteacher who eventually falls in love with her best friend and owner of the flower shop, Ashton Kutcher. When Jennifer started the movie she was indeed still breast-feeding her newest daughter, Seraphina, so we had to take breaks for breast pumping. Sometimes the baby would visit the set, too. We just decided from the get-go to make room and time for the baby. I know some directors who take themselves too seriously and would find a baby on the set a problem. But I love babies on the set and wish there were more of them. Jennifer is one of the most likable actresses I have ever worked with. In my mind she is the female version of Kurt Russell. She is a movie star but also a regular girl and a team player.

To play opposite Julia, we cast Bradley Cooper. I thought I had never met him before either, until I remembered that Julia introduced us. I went to see them when they were starring in a Broadway production of
Three Days of Rain
. Julia and Bradley got along very well on the set of
Valentine’s Day
, and I even made reference to their play in the movie. I had a voice-over in which the pilot of the plane they were flying in said they would be landing in Los Angeles after
“three days of rain.” I didn’t tell Julia and Bradley I was going to put the voice-over in, and they were surprised and tickled when they saw the final version of the movie.

The
Valentine’s Day
cast also included Queen Latifah, Jessica Biel, Jessica Alba, Eric Dane, and Patrick Dempsey. I had heard that Patrick had applied to clown school in Florida. He also liked race-car driving but never had time to do it because of his busy schedule on
Grey’s Anatomy
. One of the rewrite guys on the movie, Matt Walker, had been valedictorian of a clown school. So I introduced Matt to Patrick on the set. After tossing around some ideas we decided to have Patrick’s character juggle as a nervous habit. It was a good activity for a character, and it let him do something that he enjoyed. I always tell actors to put their hobbies down on their résumés because you never know when a director will want to use them.

While we were shooting the movie in Los Angeles, we got a lot of press interest from our pairing of two Taylors: Taylor Swift with Taylor Lautner. When New Line first said they signed Taylor Swift, I was confused. I flipped through the script and didn’t see a part for her. They said, “Come up with something.” So I did. Another person we found a good part for was Julia’s niece Emma Roberts. The only problem was that she didn’t have a driver’s license and her part called for her to drive. We rigged up a car and pulled it off-camera so she appeared to be driving herself. It was a little harrowing because she didn’t always hit the mark, but we made it work.

I joked on the movie that we had a lot of Js. Everyone seemed to be named Jennifer, Jessica, or Julia. Jessica Biel was a new, fresh face for me. What excited me about her was her willingness to do physical comedy. Some actresses would rather play it straight or be sexy rather than silly. Jessica, however, was ready for anything physical and was fearless about trying something new. She was dedicated to the part and had an extremely strong work ethic. She confided in me one day that she always worried when a job came to an end that she would never act again. Yet her career continues to thrive. Jessica really clicked with Jennifer Garner. In one scene they did a funny routine while toasting champagne glasses, and Jamie Foxx said,
“I’ve seen that bit someplace before.” He thought for a minute and then said, “I saw it in
Laverne & Shirley
! Garry, you’re stealing from yourself. But, hey. That’s okay. You’re allowed to steal from yourself.” Jamie even took the connection further and thought it would be great to pitch the idea of a
Laverne & Shirley
remake starring Jessica and Jennifer to a network. It might never happen, but it was fun to picture them skipping arm and arm to the
Schlemiel! Schlimazel!

The irony in Hollywood is that if you stick around long enough, you get to work with people you missed the first time around. I took a lot of heat in
Frankie and Johnny
for passing over Kathy Bates and choosing Michelle Pfeiffer for the lead. In
Valentine’s Day
I was finally able to work with Kathy when I cast her as Jamie Foxx’s television executive boss. Kathy had only a small part, but she did a wonderful job and I wanted her to have fun with it. I told her, “Jamie is going to ad-lib, so just be flexible and go where he goes.” Much like Anne Hathaway, Kathy loves to develop her character with a director. She said, “I never get to do a part where I chew gum.” So I let her chew gum to add some quirkiness to her character.