At the start of the week, I had no plans to go out tonight. By Friday I'm usually a crispy critter. Partly that's my fault. I'm devoted to my writing to a fault, to the tune of staying up past midnight just about every night. Some nights I literally don't get more than four or so hours of sleep. Well, that might work one time. But to keep that up? I guess for now I can kinda sorta sustain this lifestyle. I'm sure it'll catch up to me one day, when I get to a certain age. Or not. My dad's about to turn seventy and can still play hard and work hard with the rest of them. There's nothing like the ol' gene pool.
I hopped onto the ArcLight Cinemas site on Tuesday. I check it every now and again, as I do with my other favorite theaters in L.A. I'd already known Adam was coming out this week, but I wasn't sure I'd catch it until it was on DVD. Romantic comedies usually don't come at the top of my list. Unless it's a Judd Apatow flick. Although I did see 500 Days of Summer last Sunday. And tonight I saw Adam at the ArcLight Hollywood. Look at me. I'm not partial to romantic comedies, huh? I've just seen two in less than a week.
So if this isn't my genre of choice, and I'm prone to Friday night lights out, then what possessed me to go see Adam? Rose Byrne, that's who. When I hopped onto the ArcLight site Tuesday, I saw that Australian actress Rose Byrne, who plays one of the main characters in Adam, was going to be at the ArcLight for a Q&A after the 7:40 p.m. screening tonight, along with the film's writer-director, Max Mayer.
You don't understand. Rose Byrne's been one of my favorite up-and-coming actresses for a good five years now. Is she still considered up-and-coming? Or has she arrived? Perhaps the latter. She's been working fairly steadily since 2006 or so. She was slowly but surely breaking into the American movie industry. And then she scored a real coup when she landed the lead on the F/X drama Damages opposite Glenn Close. If you don't watch Damages, do yourself a favor. Please do. Even if you're indifferent to Rose, the show's writing is among the best on TV. F/X shows in general seem to attract the best and the brightest in TV writing. Nip/Tuck, Rescue Me, you name it. Great stuff!
So back to the inimitable Rose, I'm trying to think of when I started following her career. I'm pretty sure it was Wicker Park. Although it's funny, by the time I got around to seeing Wicker Park on DVD, I'd already seen her in other stuff. Wicker Park came out in August of 2004. I remember seeing the trailers earlier that summer and just being struck by her. She plays a psycho stalker, so that may have been part of it. But I don't know, I remember seeing her name, and it stuck in my head. I think the first movie I actually saw her in was Troy, which came out just before Wicker Park. She plays that priestess of Apollo who becomes Brad Pitt's love interest. And it's funny. The other main female character in Wicker Park was the German actress Diana Kruger, who played Helen of Troy. Then I saw Rose in I Capture the Castle on DVD. It's based on the first novel of English author Dodie Smith, published in 1948. Eight years later Dodie Smith made her fame and fortune 
with The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Anyway, the main reason I saw I Capture the Castle was actress Romola Garai, the up-and-coming actress who plays the main character, Cassandra Mortmain. Rose Byrne plays her older sister, whose name also happens to be Rose. I remember when I saw it, I recognized Rose Byrne as that nut from the Wicker Park trailer. I still hadn't seen Wicker Park at that point. Romola Garai caught my attention in 2004 when she played Amelia Sedley in Vanity Fair. But anyway, I eventually did get Wicker Park on DVD. I was so impressed with Rose Byrne that I had to see what else she'd done. By now I'd seen her in that, Troy, and I Capture the Castle. She had a small part in City of Ghosts, made just before I Capture the Castle. That was the movie Matt Dillon directed. It was a bit of a letdown. Not only was it not all that good, but Rose Byrne wasn't in it that much. Another movie of hers I got courtesy of Netflix was 2003's All the Way (originally called The Night We Called It a Day in Australia). It's loosely based on the true story of Frank Sinatra's stillborn concert tour in Australia in the seventies. Dennis Hopper plays Ol' Blue Eyes, which makes it almost worth seeing right there. Rose Byrne plays the love interest of the main character, a down-on-his-luck concert promoter named Rod who seizes the opportunity to kick-start his career when Frank comes to town. Only he doesn't count on Frank being a complete misanthrope. As soon as he gets off the plane in Sydney, Frank says something crude and outrageous that causes a severe public backlash. His response is to hole himself up in his Sydney hotel and sulk while Rod tries frantically to figure out what to do. This movie also has Portia de Rossi just before Arrested Development and her becoming Ellen DeGeneres' partner. Did you even know Portia was Australian? You can't have if you only know her as Lindsay Bluth Fünke. All the Way was pretty decent, although I'm not sure how much I'd've liked it if not for Rose Byrne. I'm not just saying that either. She's sort of the force behind Rod and helps him finally take a stand to Frank.
with The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Anyway, the main reason I saw I Capture the Castle was actress Romola Garai, the up-and-coming actress who plays the main character, Cassandra Mortmain. Rose Byrne plays her older sister, whose name also happens to be Rose. I remember when I saw it, I recognized Rose Byrne as that nut from the Wicker Park trailer. I still hadn't seen Wicker Park at that point. Romola Garai caught my attention in 2004 when she played Amelia Sedley in Vanity Fair. But anyway, I eventually did get Wicker Park on DVD. I was so impressed with Rose Byrne that I had to see what else she'd done. By now I'd seen her in that, Troy, and I Capture the Castle. She had a small part in City of Ghosts, made just before I Capture the Castle. That was the movie Matt Dillon directed. It was a bit of a letdown. Not only was it not all that good, but Rose Byrne wasn't in it that much. Another movie of hers I got courtesy of Netflix was 2003's All the Way (originally called The Night We Called It a Day in Australia). It's loosely based on the true story of Frank Sinatra's stillborn concert tour in Australia in the seventies. Dennis Hopper plays Ol' Blue Eyes, which makes it almost worth seeing right there. Rose Byrne plays the love interest of the main character, a down-on-his-luck concert promoter named Rod who seizes the opportunity to kick-start his career when Frank comes to town. Only he doesn't count on Frank being a complete misanthrope. As soon as he gets off the plane in Sydney, Frank says something crude and outrageous that causes a severe public backlash. His response is to hole himself up in his Sydney hotel and sulk while Rod tries frantically to figure out what to do. This movie also has Portia de Rossi just before Arrested Development and her becoming Ellen DeGeneres' partner. Did you even know Portia was Australian? You can't have if you only know her as Lindsay Bluth Fünke. All the Way was pretty decent, although I'm not sure how much I'd've liked it if not for Rose Byrne. I'm not just saying that either. She's sort of the force behind Rod and helps him finally take a stand to Frank.By 2006 I was caught up on her career. Since then, she's landed supporting roles in stuff like Marie Antoinette, 28 Weeks Later, and Sunshine, but nothing that comes close to Wicker Park. Sunshine came out in June of 2007. It was right after that when the first season of Damages premiered on F/X. At first I wasn't going to watch it. I knew Glenn Close was in it. You couldn't escape all the billboard and magazine advertisements. But that's just it. Those ads only trumped Glenn Close. I suppose that's understandable. Rose Byrne was still a pygmy in the acting world next to Glenn Close. Then, just before the first episode, I was at work reviewing a site that had a banner ad for Damages. I clicked through just to see what the fuss was about. Right away, right on the home page, I saw that Rose Byrne was playing the other female lead. The show's protagonist, in fact. I knew I had to watch it. Thankfully, the writing turned out to be top drawer. I'd be hooked on this show even if Rose wasn't in it. Since Damages, her movie career's been somewhat quiet, at least in the U.S., although on IMDb I see she's been making other stuff in other countries, like Just Buried, a dark comedy from Canada with Graham Greene.
Now you can see why I simply couldn't pass up the chance to see her in person tonight, my typical Friday night exhaustion be damned. I'm glad I did too. Adam turned out to be a pretty decent flick, not at all the typical romantic comedy I was expecting. It didn't end the way I thought it would. And the title character was extremely well played by English actor Hugh Dancy. I'm pretty sure this is the first American role I've ever seen him in.
The story kicks off with Adam's father having just died, leaving him independent for the first time ever, a huge deal since Adam suffers from Asperger's. And then Beth (Rose Byrne)
moves into an apartment in the same building. Adam's immediately smitten but has no idea how to bust a move. In no time Hugh Dancy vanishes into the character. Well done. Rose Byrne was adorable as usual. The story's got this pretty significant subplot with her character's father, Peter Gallagher, in hot water for financial fraud or something. That case sort of serves as a frame for Beth to start relating to and confiding in Adam more. You get the picture. Or do you? Again, it won't turn out quite the way you think, although it is a happy ending for all. Just don't lose sight of the two leads' career dreams. Adam's all about outer space, studying the stars. The second time they meet, he's on his laptop perusing the most recent images from the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn. Beth, meanwhile, teaches at an elementary school, but what she really wants to do is write kids' books.
moves into an apartment in the same building. Adam's immediately smitten but has no idea how to bust a move. In no time Hugh Dancy vanishes into the character. Well done. Rose Byrne was adorable as usual. The story's got this pretty significant subplot with her character's father, Peter Gallagher, in hot water for financial fraud or something. That case sort of serves as a frame for Beth to start relating to and confiding in Adam more. You get the picture. Or do you? Again, it won't turn out quite the way you think, although it is a happy ending for all. Just don't lose sight of the two leads' career dreams. Adam's all about outer space, studying the stars. The second time they meet, he's on his laptop perusing the most recent images from the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn. Beth, meanwhile, teaches at an elementary school, but what she really wants to do is write kids' books.Okay that's enough about the film. I was somewhat disappointed, although not all that surprised, that writer-director Max Mayer did most of the talking. I mean come on, he wrote the original screenplay and then directed it himself, so of course he'd have a lot to say. Max hasn't done very much as either a writer or director. He directed an episode of West Wing, an episode of Alias, some other TV stuff. He did one indie movie about a decade ago. Not much at all really. And he looked to be in his fifties or so. Maybe he's got a good career in theater. I don't know. That was never said, nor was his professional past in general discussed much.
As for how he came up with the idea for Adam, it was thanks to NPR. That's cool, I listen to NPR just about every day during my drive to and from work. He said that although he's originally from New York, he's officially become an Angelino because he listens to NPR while driving around this big-ass city. Funny, I never knew that was something associated with living here, but if I'm not living proof of that theory, I don't know who is. One day during one of these drives, NPR did a story about this guy with Asperger's. Max listened, fascinated. By the time he got home, he knew what he wanted his next movie to be about. He said that he's a man who's not easily touched and for whom emotions don't come easy, but the Asperger's story on NPR really got to him.
Max did quite a bit of research on the Internet. As it turned out, though, he'd already done a lot of "research" as a teenager. Again, judging by his age, that would have to be decades ago. He said he vol
unteered at a camp for disabled kids. The term Asperger's hadn't been coined yet, but he said in hindsight, based on the reams of material he's read about it now, that's most likely what those kids had. In creating the character Adam, he drew just as much from those memories as he did from the research. Speaking of the latter, a lot of the sites he visited had video testimony from Asperger's patients. These videos helped Max quite a bit in developing Adam's voice and mannerisms and so forth. Asperger's patients tend to be quite good with computers. You'll notice this applies to Adam in the film. But Max did say that you have to take a lot of what the Asperger's patients say with a pinch of salt. They do live in their own world, after all. Not everything they tell you in their video testimonies is going to be reflective of reality. Because of that very issue, though, Max said the videos made him think of creating a sort of dual first-person point of view. You'll notice that in Adam, you can sort of see things the way Adam does. You come to understand his own unique logic. But then we also get to see what Beth is going through.
unteered at a camp for disabled kids. The term Asperger's hadn't been coined yet, but he said in hindsight, based on the reams of material he's read about it now, that's most likely what those kids had. In creating the character Adam, he drew just as much from those memories as he did from the research. Speaking of the latter, a lot of the sites he visited had video testimony from Asperger's patients. These videos helped Max quite a bit in developing Adam's voice and mannerisms and so forth. Asperger's patients tend to be quite good with computers. You'll notice this applies to Adam in the film. But Max did say that you have to take a lot of what the Asperger's patients say with a pinch of salt. They do live in their own world, after all. Not everything they tell you in their video testimonies is going to be reflective of reality. Because of that very issue, though, Max said the videos made him think of creating a sort of dual first-person point of view. You'll notice that in Adam, you can sort of see things the way Adam does. You come to understand his own unique logic. But then we also get to see what Beth is going through.One thing Max said that I can't help but take with a pinch of salt was that, while writing Adam, he never thought of it as a romantic comedy. Come on, really? As a filmmaker, the man must go to movies a lot. You're sort of obligated to if you work in that business. It's like why a lot of writers are also voracious readers. But no, he insists he thought of this as a drama. He said this in response to someone in the audience asking about the unconventional ending. Why should he have a conventional ending, he said, if it never occurred to him that he was writing for a genre with certain conventions? Well okay. As a writer myself, I can kinda sorta relate to how you can get so engrossed in writing a narrative to the point that obvious, bigger-picture things never occur to you. Maybe. But they're supposed to occur to you during all the rewrites. He did say that his producers and financiers told him to give the film a more romantic comedy kind of ending. Max caved and did it...but absolutely hated it. The happier ending felt forced so he took it back out.
One thing Max talked about that did impress me was how Adam was financed independently. That is, entirely outside the studio system. As someone who has designs on making an indie film myself, that's kind of encouraging. Even more encouraging is that Max himself didn't have to deal with the money people. His producer took care of all that. Wow, that's great. I hope when I write and direct my opus, that I can get a producer to raise the money. I've heard quite a few stories of directors who have to act as their own producers, even if they officially have producers. The movie business, huh?
He didn't write the script with any actors in mind, which a lot of screenwriters do. He certainly wasn't thinking of Hugh Dancy. The only thing Max knew him from was Ella Enchanted, where he plays Prince Charming. Max said his daughter dragged him to that. But then a couple years ago, when they were finally casting Adam, that flick Evening came out. His casting director was taken with Hugh's performance in that and how he held his own against Meryl Streep and Vanessa Redgrave. So they invited him to a hotel in New York and had a meeting and offered him the part. As for how they got Rose Byrne, she'd just finished the first season of Damages and was on holiday in India when her agent sent her the script. She liked it so much she cut her trip short.
The shoot lasted twenty-five days. Again, like the financing bit above, that is very inspiring. Twenty-five days?! And they only had one day of rehearsal. They couldn't afford the luxury of a month or more of poring over the script. They just had to dive in. When it premiered at Sundance this past January, Fox Searchlight scooped it up, but with the proviso that Max expand the ending a bit. Not change the ending like his financiers tried to make him do, but just build on the way it ends now. Fox agreed to pay for it. Max was happy to oblige.
Rose, who turned thirty exactly one week ago, said working on this film was "delightful," a welcome break from all the procedural stuff she's done, like Damages, Sunshine, and 28 Weeks Later. Her first day on the set became the second scene with her and Adam, when she ge
ts home with groceries and Adam's on the front steps looking at images of Saturn on his laptop. One thing that struck her right away was that Hugh Dancy stayed in character between takes. She got used to it eventually, but that first day it was kind of awkward. She said she was wondering if the whole thing was a cruel joke. Seriously, though, she said she didn't get to meet Hugh, so to speak, until they started promoting the film a couple weeks ago. I don't know, I have mixed feelings about the whole method business. I always think of what Olivier told Dustin Hoffman while they were making Marathon Man in response to Dustin's thing about living the character. Olivier apparently said, "Dustin, my dear boy, why don't you try acting?" Speaking of promoting the film, Hugh was with Rose and Max last night at the Landmark over in West L.A. Why couldn't he make it tonight? I'm sort of getting the impression that he's not the easiest guy to work with, in spite of how diplomatic Rose tried to be.
ts home with groceries and Adam's on the front steps looking at images of Saturn on his laptop. One thing that struck her right away was that Hugh Dancy stayed in character between takes. She got used to it eventually, but that first day it was kind of awkward. She said she was wondering if the whole thing was a cruel joke. Seriously, though, she said she didn't get to meet Hugh, so to speak, until they started promoting the film a couple weeks ago. I don't know, I have mixed feelings about the whole method business. I always think of what Olivier told Dustin Hoffman while they were making Marathon Man in response to Dustin's thing about living the character. Olivier apparently said, "Dustin, my dear boy, why don't you try acting?" Speaking of promoting the film, Hugh was with Rose and Max last night at the Landmark over in West L.A. Why couldn't he make it tonight? I'm sort of getting the impression that he's not the easiest guy to work with, in spite of how diplomatic Rose tried to be.A woman a few rows behind me asked about the music in the film, saying how much she liked it and so on. Max said yeah, well, he had a great music supervisor for this film, a woman named Robin Urdang. As it turned out, Robin was sitting right next to the woman who asked the question. This woman was a friend of hers or something. I wish I'd gotten a better look at Robin. I've just looked up her credits on IMDb. The woman's done a ton! She's been a music supervisor or consultant on all manner of movies and TV shows going back to the early nineties. Now there's someone whose career is obviously recession-proof. Max did give an answer about the song selection, especially about the songs he picked for the sadder scenes. He said it was harder than you'd think to find the right songs, but maybe that was partly his problem because he's....what's the word? He had a hard time describing himself. Rose suggested "neurotic." That made him blush a little. I'll take that to mean he is neurotic. Quite frankly you sort of get that feeling after listening to him for a while.
Someone asked about any feedback they'd gotten from the Asperger's community. Both Max and Rose couldn't say enough about how positive it's been. They've been getting great feedback from all over the place, including other countries, kudos for how accurate and sensitive Max drew Adam as a character.
As for their next projects, Rose hasn't missed a beat. She just wrapped a comedy called Get Him to the Greek, coming out next summer. It was directed by Forgetting Sarah Marshall's Nicholas Stoller, co-written by both him and Jason Segel, who also wrote Sarah Marshall. Sucks that it won't be out for a full year. As for Max, he's working on a script about this guy in 1880s Chicago. He'd also like to direct it, but he can't get his agents to take him seriously whenever he pitches it, so he's on the prowl for other people's scripts he might like to direct.
