The Female Touch: The Break-Up is based on an idea of Vince Vaughn’s and the script was written by two men, so there wasn’t a lot of female input included during the writing process. That meant that when it came time to shoot the film, Aniston’s input was invaluable in getting the female point of view right.
“There was definitely a lot of male energy in the script, and that was sort of said, when I come into it, ‘We’ll flesh out the female voice a little bit more.’ So that’s definitely what happened.” Aniston offered advice after it was requested. “Yeah but in a way of like, ‘We’re dudes, you know? I don’t know how the female side would respond.’ They were great about it and they made it so much fun, truthfully, because it’s universal, the relationship. Everybody can relate to these [characters]. It’s fun, you kind of go back to all the relationships in your life and you sort of remember funny arguments or funny moments or things that you can apply to it. Like for Jeremy, that happened. The 12 lemons argument actually happened for him, as I’m sure it’s happened for everybody. All those things …they’re endless. It’s an endless well.”
The Difficulties of Finding Funny Characters: “It’s really hard, really hard. Yeah, there’s just not a lot out there. It’s hard because those men are such one man shows most of the time that they don’t like to… I don't know. They just don’t come along very often with the equal male-female funnies.”
Filming on Location in Chicago: Aniston admits she loved working in the Windy City. “Chicago is my kind of town – yes. It really was. You know what? I just had a ball there. There’s just something about the people. They’re kind, they are respectful. It’s a feeling. It’s an energy. When you walk through the streets of Chicago, you just feel great. And as far as the food, the architecture, the theater, the museums, you just have so much so. Yeah, I absolutely love it.”
While she loves the city, that doesn’t mean there weren’t a few drawbacks to working there. “It was a crowd rush. It was a thousand degrees, we were in sweaters,” said Aniston before adding, “You know what was fun was just being in Wrigley Field, having heard so much about it and seeing old photographs of it. When you look across the streets to the tops of the brownstones, you see all of the bleachers. I guess they didn’t used to charge people, but they used to have people just come up and stand on top of the brownstones. Then somebody got hip to it and they said, ‘Well let’s build some bleachers,’ and I guess they started charging. So yes, it’s great.”
