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It's Love Actually |
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Directed by Hollywood veteran Garry Marshall, VALENTINE’S DAY explores love in all its facets on the one day a year dedicated to the art of expressing it. On set in L.A., Marshall and the star studded cast explain further. |
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It is a picture postcard setting this early morning on the canals of Venice Beach, California. The neighborhood is connected by a network of quaint little footbridges.
On one such bridge, actors Ashton Kutcher and George Lopez stand in the crisp sunlight, deep in conversation, as a fishing pole dangles a line in the water.
While the conversation seems very personal, the two are surrounded by lights, cameras and myriad crew members going about their production duties.
And the movie being shot here today is the new romantic comedy Valentine’s Day, the topic at hand is love.
Directed by Hollywood veteran Garry Marshall, Valentine’s Day explores love in all its facets on the one day a year dedicated to the art of expressing it.
“The film follows seven intertwining love stories that take place during the course of one day in Los Angeles,” Marshall explains during a break from filming.
“Some characters fall in love, some do not find love, but they try. There are so many emotions that happen on this day – love, sadness, excitement depression, longing.”
Marshall has a long history in this town and an extended family that encompasses Hollywood royalty and the newest generation alike.
For his latest, he’s attracted a star studded cast that includes Jessica Alba (Fantastic Four), Jessica Biel (I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry), Bradley Cooper (The Hangover), Eric Dane (TV’s Grey’s Anatomy), Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx (Ray), Jennifer Garner (Juno), Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married), Ashton Kutcher (What Happens in Vegas), Taylor Lautner (The Twilight Saga: New Moon), Academy Award winner Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich) and award-winning singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, in her feature film debut.
Marshall directed two of the film’s stars – Julia Roberts and Anne Hathaway – in their breakout hits Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries, respectively, and also reunites with Hector Elizondo, who has been in all of Marshall’s feature films to date.
The stories interlock and intertwine over the course of Valentine’s Day, starting with Kutcher’s character, Reed, whose flower shop and café, Siena Boutique, becomes a nexus of sorts on its busiest day of the year; Jessica Alba plays his girlfriend, Morley; George Lopez plays his friend and employee Alphonso; Jennifer Garner is his best friend Julia, who is dating Harrison, a doctor played by Patrick Dempsey.
Another nexus of activity is a talent agency where Queen Latifah is a top agent named Paula, and Anne Hathaway is her temporary assistant, Liz, who is dating Josh, played by Topher Grace, who works in the mail room.
Eric Dane plays a conflicted football star and top client of Erin’s, whose publicist, Kara, played by Jessica Biel, hates Valentine’s Day. She is friends with sports reporter Kelvin, played by Jamie Foxx, who is handed the unwanted assignment of covering the day’s activities as a human interest story by his boss, Susan, played by Kathy Bates.
The final tale unfolds on an airplane, with army captain Kate, played by Julia Roberts, sharing a row on the plane with Holden, played by Bradley Cooper, while both are on the way to LAX.
Kate will have only one day in the city and is making the long trip from Iraq to see a very special person in her life. “He’s a lucky man,” Holden tells her.
As luck would have it, in gathering together the star-studded cast to fill the 19 primary roles in the film, the first to sign on was Roberts.
“The first person who said, ‘Yes, I’m doing it,’ was Julia Roberts, which is a good person to get first,” the director laughs as he reclines in his director’s chair between set-ups.
“And after that, many people who were not sure were sure suddenly. They all came around.”
Some members of the cast were a natural fit, but others came as a surprise to the director.
“Taylor Swift came in to do a scene,” Marshall remembers. “She wasn’t available to do the film but wanted to do something in it. So, she was a guest. We wrote a scene. And I gotta say, I never saw her act before. I’ve seen her sing and jump around, but she did a scene. And she was sensational.”
Marshall encouraged the actors to also bring something of themselves to their characters, such as Julia Roberts’s propensity for backgammon.
“I take from their lives and try to get it into the picture so they do something comfortable,” he explains.
When the director met with Patrick Dempsey, he learned a little known fact about the actor and worked it into the film. “I didn’t know Patrick Dempsey actually applied to clown college,” he marvels.
“You know there’s a college for clowns? He didn’t go, but he loves it, so he’s a master juggler. So I said, ‘You juggled a lot once? You’re juggling in this picture.’ So he’s a doctor who juggles.”
But back to the pastoral scene unfolding on a Venice footbridge on this bright California morning. Kutcher’s character, Reed, started the day by proposing marriage to his girlfriend Morley (Alba), but midway through Valentine’s Day, things are not going well.
“My character desperately wants to believe in love,” Kutcher explains later, in the living room of a nearby canal-side house. “I like playing the guy who’s sort of the architect of love, because to me, that’s what a florist is. My whole job in the movie revolves around Valentine’s Day. It’s a florist’s busiest day, right? It’s like the biggest day of their entire year.
“So my character has got big plans for this day and what it’s going to be and what it’s going to mean. At the same time, my best friend, Julia – Jennifer Garner – is in a new budding relationship and he’s trying to help her navigate that relationship while his is falling apart.”
Producers Mike Karz and Wayne Allan Rice were huge fans of the director and were thrilled when he took the helm of Valentine’s Day.
“Garry is spontaneous and makes the environment so conducive to creative ideas,” Karz says. “He’s fun, inclusive and considerate and it rubs off on everybody. Garry makes sure everyone is at ease on the set.
“I’ve never been on a film where there’s a softball game. You do a five-day shoot, and everybody just wants to go home and unwind, because they go back to work on Monday. But there’s a scheduled, organised crew/cast softball game, not after the production, but on a Saturday.
“I get there and there are 300 people there, including the actors! It’s barbecue and ice cream and Garry loves baseball, so they made teams with Valentine’s Day jerseys. He creates this environment in which it’s not just about filmmaking, but about having a good time.”
The next time we visit the set, the company has moved to a soundstage on the Warner Bros. lot. Within the cavernous soundstage, the boxy construction materials eventually give way to a meticulously created Indian food restaurant; you can almost smell the aroma of curry and coriander.
In today’s sequence, an Indian wedding is unfolding a restaurant at the same time Jessica Biel’s character, Kara, is waiting for people to show up at her “I Hate Valentine’s Day” party.
The set has been built with a light-up dance floor and once he saw the set, director Marshall realised he wanted the wedding to culminate in a group dance.
Jessica Biel, who plays a highly successful yet neurotic publicist who is unlucky in love, joins in the dance, totally immersed and uninhibited.
Physical comedy is a side of Biel we seldom see on screen and she takes to it with great relish. “I love doing it,” says Biel between takes.
Still wearing her character’s blue floral dress and glamorous heels, the actress drinks water to hydrate after so much dancing.
“We’re having as much fun off-camera as we are on-camera and I think that comes across in the film. Garry has been wonderful in helping me find how we can make this funnier. We’re trying to get a little Lucille Ball in there wherever we can.”
“These actresses [in Valentine’s Day] are terrific,” Marshall brightens as he talks. “They’re brave. They take a chance on whatever you try. It’s great for me. The most brave I ever worked with – and I had worked for her – is Jessica Biel. She’s also a producer, and I acted for her in a movie [2008’s Hole in the Paper Sky].
“And in this movie, she is terrific. She just tries anything. She’s the one who plays sort of the crazy girl, is pretty but neurotic and young people call that today, they call a girl like that a ‘hot mess.’ But she does most of the physical comedy. And so she’s great.”
Jennifer Garner’s character, the soft-spoken schoolteacher Julia, also finds herself at Kara’s party at the end of a Valentine’s Day with no shortage of ups and downs. Though the actress isn’t working today, Biel explains the scene, “She has just gotten her heart broken, and comes to my party where I have a big pińata hanging. She’s had such a terrible evening that she just walks by me and beats the crap out of this pińata. It’s hilarious.”
In a movie with such an in-demand cast, putting together the schedule was like a jigsaw puzzle, with the entire cast never all gathered at the same place at the same time. Today, 18-yearold Emma Roberts is on-set and sits down for a chat.
“My character is your typical teenager, very much into school, her after-school job, and texting,” Roberts describes.
“Texting is good and bad. It’s good if people are shy. They can actually say what they want over the text. It’s bad because I like talking on the phone with people for conversations, where you can really connect.”
“I grew up in the Fifties, so we actually had to speak,” Garry Marshall quips. “Today, texting is the way most people communicate. It’s a different type of love, but the pain is still the same, the joy is still the same. And that never changes.”
Discover Valentine’s Day on DVD and Blu-ray at JB Hi-Fi » |
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