Talk about the elephant in the room, how does a movie like this premiere on DVD?
“How physically is that Lionsgate bought it and they decided to dump it. I'm not that surprised. The thing is, to be honest, I've made a movie every year and they don't all come out very good. They don't all come out exactly what you want it to. I guess people didn't think this one came out that good. I don't know. I thought it was good; the audience when we tested it liked it. I went onto my next movie and then I heard that people weren't liking it. They didn't think that there was a market for it because it was based on show business, and Ben wasn't likeable in the role but I thought Ben was really good in the role.
When I wrote it, I always saw him. The reason that he's in the movie, other than that he wanted to do it, was when I wrote the movie, the guy always looked like Ben Affleck to me. I'd never met Ben Affleck. I wrote the movie for Steven Spielberg. It was an assignment. He paid me to write it and then he decided he didn't want to do it. The people that financed Upside of Anger said, ‘Well, we would do it with you if you did it for a price.’ I sent it to Ben Affleck and he said, ‘Yeah, I'd do this.’"
You defended Ben really well at the height of the Ben-bashing. Does going straight to video take the luster off his comeback?
“I don't know. I just got done reading this Cameron Crowe book on Billy Wilder. He's talking about all these movies that bombed that we all think now are good, and guys whose careers went in peaks and valleys. So I don't know how it's going to happen for Ben. I think he's a really talented guy and I do think he's going to have a comeback. And I think that people like him. I would have thought that after Hollywoodland and how good he was in it, I got excited. But then Hollywoodland didn't do any business so that didn't help. But I think he's a really talented guy.”
Has the grudge toward DVD premieres lessened at all?
“I don't know. I mean, to be honest, I don't think it's hurt my career that it opened on DVD. It doesn't feel like it to me. I don't think that there's the stigma of that as much anymore, but we all like to see movies in theaters and stuff. And let me say, I think that if we had kicked and screamed, we could have forced them to put it into 15 theaters or something. But we're smart enough people to know that that doesn't mean anything. It's an ego stroke. I've never been one for those.
I had this movie called The Search for John Gissing which I did with myself and Janeane Garafolo and Alan Rickman. I put up a lot of my own money and scraped it together and couldn't get it released. This was a few years back, I couldn't get a release for it. Then people kept saying, ‘Oh, we'll put it in six theaters.’ You know, I'd rather not. And then they'll own it forever? I don't like those fake releases so I never even spoke to Lionsgate. When I heard they were doing it, I said ‘Okay, I'm not going to fight City Hall.’"
What prompted you to think of this conflict between a personal crisis and professional one, like the most valuable client ruining your marriage?
“I was hired to do this thing about forgiveness and trying to reverse it where the woman cheats and a man has to realize that he's in love with her so he's got to figure out a way to forgive her. I was just trying to put obstacles in the way of forgiving her. One of the best ways you can really get to a man is mess with his work.”
Do you classify the film as comedy or drama?
“I don't make those distinctions but I will say that this one has wilder gear shifts than I've ever tried. It might be to its faults, but I really was going from pretty heavy drama to pretty wild comedy. In something like Upside of Anger or Mind of the Married Man, I do comedy but I keep it pretty much one tone. But I don't think like that. That's kind of the problem with my work is I don't think, ‘This is a comedy and this is drama.’ Just, ‘This is the story I want to tell and this is the scene and this is the way I want to tell it.’"
Did you think that playing scenes with those big teeth on Ben might be awkward?
“Yeah. I did. But it made me laugh. Ben just looked so goofy. That's why I got him out of it. He's only in it for eight minutes, 10 minutes of the movie. But I just thought it was funny. I just thought this guy pushing this dentist around and acting like an a**hole ends up with teeth that don't fit him, which happens by the way. A lot of this came from I know a real guy named Dr. Kevin Sands who puts in those teeth, and he tells me that sometimes he just screws up because people don't sit still or they want these big smiles but they don't have them. So that's where that came from. But yeah, I did think that that was a problem or could be a problem. I also thought the chase through Chinatown could be a problem, but that's my process to go and test it to the audience and see if the audience thinks it's a problem. And they really didn't. The audience was swinging with it.”
What makes Jerry O'Connell the ultimate client for agents in movies, in this and Jerry Maguire?
“You know, I didn't even think about that to be honest until later, and I think that's why a lot of people saw it as one of the things that brought the comparisons to Jerry Maguire, but I just like Jerry [O’Connell]. He's been over to my place playing poker and then he started going with Rebecca and I just thought, ‘Wow, he'd be perfect.’ The other side I've got to say about this shoot is it was the most fun I'd ever had. We had, everybody, Amber Valletta, Bai Ling, Gina [Gershon], Ben, we had so much fun. The crew was great. It was one of those things where you just loved going to work every day.”
