Cusack adds another romantic comedy notch on his belt with "Must Love Dogs," an adult relationship comedy about Internet dating and finding the perfect partner.
John Cusack on His Decision to Do Another Romantic Comedy: “I was going to go off and do a film in Europe, and the way things happen in the film business so many times, it fell apart at the last minute. I thought, ‘I’m going to be sitting home right now not working.’ I hadn’t had any of my own projects ready, and I then I had a call saying, ‘You’ve got to meet this guy Gary Goldberg. He really wants to talk to you.’
So I went and met him for lunch and he seemed like a great guy, and I read the script. So it just sort of came out of the blue, and they asked me to do it. But I thought the combination of Gary and Diane [Lane] and Chris Plummer – that’s a pretty great pedigree, so I was kind of happy to be asked to join such a great group.”
On Typecasting as the Go-To Romantic Comedy Guy: “I don’t think of it that way, as type casting. I think if I get offered to do a movie about relationships I’m going to download as much of what I think about them into a part, or what seems funny to me about it, or what’s on my mind about it. So, if I get offered those parts and think they can be good…
It seems to me that one thing people do over and over again is try to figure out how to get married, stay married, fall in love, how to rekindle all this stuff. It seems to me to be a pretty eternal theme so I don’t know if you can get typecast from making movies about men relating to women. It seems to be what is going on on the planet a lot.”
John Cusack on the Internet: “I’m not really that much of an Internet person. I use it for final drafts for screenplays, and then e-mail. Then I call my assistant all the time and say, ‘My computer’s down. Can you have someone come fix it?’ And then she comes by and they turn it on, and that was the problem with the computer. So I’m not really that good with it. But I do the Google thing where you can Google your name and then find out what the press is saying about you. I’ve done that a few times just to see if they’re saying anything. What I did, I did check out some of those online dating things and some of those chat rooms, and I was amazed at how intense that is.“
It is pretty bizarre, but the whole instant messaging – text thing, it can replace the phone, but you can keep things going it seems like. You can stay in touch with people, even if they are all over the world, so in a sense it’s great because you can just write anybody a note any time and it seems fantastic. But there are more and more of those ads for these things, ‘We’re going to find your perfect mate. You put all your information with us.’ There’s more and more of those things on TV, isn’t there? Late at night when we’re sitting there not trying to sleep. They’re all over.”
If He Was Forced to Go Online to Get a Date… “I don’t want to get a date online. I’m trying to think of what I would put online. I’d probably put something just really funny and absurd, and then if somebody approached me with something that was equally funny, then I would know I would like them. I would try to be funny, and then if someone was funny back I would think, ‘Oh, there must be something interesting there.’ What would I put? ‘Nice person, sometimes brooding, sometimes nice.’”
John Cusack on How to Make a Good Romantic Comedy: “What I think was so great about what Gary was, and I really didn’t know Gary, I just knew that he was this kind of this impresario of television - he’s like James L. Brooks or one of those guys who made those great comedies and character-based comedies that will work forever in television. He really loves character and I think from working in television, the process keeps evolving with Gary. He’s always writing it, and re-writing it, and re-tweaking it, and throwing something out. He just loves characters.
I think he found the book and loved the idea of doing this story with Diane, but then he just kinds of falls in love with the characters and then just keeps trying to make their world more interesting, and more interesting, and he’s not precious at all. He’s really a terrific. I heard great things about him, but he really exceeded all my expectations that way. He just stands there and he goes, ‘I love this guy. I love this girl,’ and ‘How do we make this better?’ and ‘What do we do here?’"
PAGE 2: John Cusack on the "Must Love Dogs" Script and Working with Diane Lane
