"You have to go back to Adventures in Babysitting. That’s where you’ve got to start," said Columbus, explaining the appeal of 20th Century Fox's I Love You, Beth Cooper at the film's LA press day. "For me, the reason I did this movie was that I was in a situation where you have big budgets, like with the Harry Potter movie, and you tend to work at a slightly slower pace, and you become spoiled and a little soft. And I thought, 'I need to reinvigorate the process of filmmaking.' I wanted to go back to that, and I said to myself, 'If I were getting out of film school right now and I was starting to direct my first movie, what would I do?'"
"I went back and looked at the movies I had written - Gremlins and Goonies - and then I looked at the first movie I directed, which was Adventures in Babysitting. And this had been sitting in our office as a book and Hayden was attached to it. I thought, 'Well, this could be a companion piece to Adventures in Babysitting.' This gave me an opportunity to do a movie on a lower budget, fairly quickly, with a brand new cast, and try to recreate that energy for a filmmaker, like myself, who’s been given a lot of money to make movies."
Columbus could relate to the two lead male characters in this - the guy who heads up the debate team and never dates, and the guy who is a total movie geek that everyone believes is gay - because he shared a little something with both of them. "I was a complete combination of these two guys. I was Denis Cooverman and Rich Munsch because I just was a freak in high school," admitted Columbus. "I was a guy who, literally, was in love with movies, in a town that was a factory town. I would see movies all weekend and imitate the characters, and didn’t make a lot of friends."
And he could relate to being the guy who never says a word to the girl he lusts after in school. "I was hopelessly in love with probably seven or eight different girls, who all said no. But, that sense of putting them all on a pedestal and not really knowing who they were was a big problem."
The Cast of I Love You, Beth Cooper
Columbus says this film was the first of his career in which he came onboard after the lead (Hayden Panettiere) had been cast. "I thought, 'I’ll meet her and, if she’s a complete flake, I may have to recast.' But I was very taken with her because she’s very bright and has a great sense of comic timing, which I wasn’t expecting. I didn’t know from her work on Heroes whether she was capable of going a little deeper. The thing that fascinated me about this character is that Beth Cooper has had the most amazing four years of her life and, once she hits graduation and the clouds dissipate, her life is on a bit of a decline and she’s going to be going into a fairly ordinary, mundane life. Denis Cooverman, on the other hand, has had the four worst years of his life and, after this graduation, things are going to start to look up for him. I was interested in how those two characters would intersect and, when they came together, I needed an actress who had an emotional core, who could get to that point where you see in her face that she realizes that things are not going to be going great for her and her life is going to be more ordinary. And Hayden was able to get there. "Hayden Panettiere was also willing to really put herself out there, including doing a short nude scene. "I think I was most surprised by her willingness," said Columbus. "She was game to do just about anything. It was interesting that she felt very comfortable doing the locker room scene, and I was shocked by that. I kept most of the creepy crew members to the back of the set. The older, creepier guys, who were just sneaking in to get a peek were kept at a distance. Honestly, I was really surprised by her comedic timing. Paul Rust [who plays Denis] had been studying and doing comedy for years, but I never really associated Hayden with doing comedy. And she was really spot-on, in terms of her timing, which is a very difficult thing."
And speaking of Paul Rust, he's not exactly the obvious choice to play the leading man in a high school romantic comedy. To put it gently, he's quirky and interesting-looking. "There were a lot of issues," said Columbus of his casting choice. "Our executive at Fox really was supportive of my decision because Paul is, to say the least, a unique-looking guy. I really felt that the challenge was to take a guy like that and make it believable that he could have some sort of emotional connection with a girl who looks like Hayden. That was the excitement for me. It’s a little bit of Cyrano in there. I wanted to go for a guy you could believe would have had a miserable high school experience. Paul Rust’s face says it all to me. Just one look at him and I thought, 'Oh, yeah.'"
Chris Columbus on His Other Projects
Although there's talk of a Goonies remake, Columbus isn't involved with that - at this point. "The Goonies thing is fun. I’ve always kind of liked the movie, but now it’s become a weird, cult-ish thing among 21- to 26-year-olds. They really like that movie. I thought it was okay when it came out, but these kids are wearing the shirts and that’s the movie they want to talk about, more than any other movie," revealed Columbus.Prior to making I Love You Beth Cooper Columbus directed Rent, the musical based on the hit Broadway play, but that was way back in 2005. "That was part of the reason I jumped into this," said Columbus when asked about the break between films. "So I jumped into it, and then realized I was going to do Percy Jackson immediately afterwards. There won’t be a longer break anymore, as far as I’m concerned."
Page 2: Making Percy Jackson and Leaving Harry Potter Behind
