By Fred Topel | Images property of Universal Pictures.
Michael Lehmann knows how to tell female stories that men like too. Heathers has never been called a chick flick to my knowledge. Because I Said So will be, because it’s about a mom and three daughters, but that’s okay.
Interview: Michael Lehmann on Because I Said So
“It certainly is a very female centered story,” said Lehmann. “I think two things set it apart for me, two or three things. First of all, in addition to being a fairly conventional romantic comedy it's also a mother-daughter story. And I think the mother-daughter story has equal weight with the romance and feeds the romance and makes for a much different balance than you get in most romantic comedies. I was immediately drawn to that. And I felt that was the strength of the idea of the movie and the strength of the characters that were written. The other thing that appealed to me was the idea of working with Diane [Keaton] who is terrific and brings something to it that helps quite a bit and to work with her in finding the balance between a good strong emotional story mother-daughter emotional story and some romantic comedy that also delves with the character who was older than your typical center of a romantic comedy. I guess I'll back up and say the mother-daughter story was part of it. Also the fact that in addition to the Mandy Moore, Gabriel Macht, Tom Scott story there was the Diane Keaton and Steven Collins story which balance that out.”
Lehmann could relate to the mother daughter story, because sons have mothers too. “I have a very strong mother that's for sure. She has a lot of ideas. I get along really well with her and we're really close. I have two sisters, I had two sisters, one isn't alive anymore but there was the dynamic in my house with the mother-daughter stuff was I think more relevant than the mother-son relationship I experienced. But I definitely know what it's like to have a mother who has a really strong point of view.”
Because I Said So
That said, Lehmann was not originally confident he was the right director for Because I Said So. “I have to tell you when I first read the script I thought I woman should direct this movie. It's a very much a woman's movie. It's about how women relate to one other. It’s about mothers and daughters and girls and at first I thought I'm probably not the guy to do this but I had a really good meeting with Jessie Nelson who's the producer and we talked about it and also I've always felt that as a director in my work, I've done movies that are sophomorically masculine. I've done movies that have mostly feminine characters and elements and I think that both Heathers and Truth About Cats and Dogs are in their own weird ways different ends of the girl movie spectrum but they’re very much centered around the female characters and I like those movies and I like working with good actresses. I rally like getting inside the heads of female characters. I think I can do that well and I enjoy it. Jessie and I talked and I thought about what this movie was about and what it had to offer and where I could take it and it got me very interested.”
Like most romantic comedies, there are plenty of cute moments, such as a balloon sticking to the static cling on Mandy Moore’s dress. “The balloon was a huge pain in the ass so to speak. It worked so much better that I thought it would. The trick is super simple. First I thought we'd need to CGI a balloon in and we're going to have to do all sorts of fancy stuff. But for the most part it was a piece of monofilament pulling through her dress. There's a guy hidden out of frame tugging this balloon at the right time, the right way, the right place, a wind machine and all that sort of stuff. Those things can take hours and hours and we did ok. We did ok. We got stuff fairly quickly.”
Because I Said So opens to theatres this Friday, February 2nd.
For the trailer, movie stills, synopsis, more interviews and more movie info, go to the Because
I Said So Movie Page.
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