After a screening of Going the Distance last night, the director, Nanette Burstein, sat down to answer a few questions from the audience. We’ll have a full review of the film (which was great) in a couple of weeks closer to the release date. Below is a paraphrased recap of the Q&A session.
Nanette Burstein has primarily directed documentaries and commercials. Her most well known film is American Teen, a film which followed a set of seniors in high school, which won the Directing Award at Sundance in 2008. Going the Distance is her first fiction feature length film. Going the Distance is a romantic comedy about long distance relationships starring Drew Barrymore and Justin Long.
Nanette Burstein was attracted to this project because she herself has been in a long distance relationship and knows the problems and pains that come along with it. She loved all the comedy that was in the script and liked the angle of gender issues. With long distance relationships, the woman almost always has to give up everything for the couple but in this day and age, that’s changing. Nanette went to Drew Barrymore to get involved. Traditionally, Barrymore is America’s sweetheart in romantic comedies but she’s never been in an R-Rated project. The movie was always planned to be an R-rated film so they had the liberty to drop a lot of “F” bombs and apparently Drew Barrymore loved to use them!
This is what happens when you pass out drunk...
The script was born out of a night of hard drinking (like most good things). Geoff LaTulippe, the writer, was a script reader at the studio and an executive was in a long distance relationship at the time. They were drinking buddies and continually complained to each other about how bad the scripts that came in to the studio were so they decided that they would write something better. And they did. When Nanette got involved, they rewrote the script a few times but in the end, half the movie was improvised anyway.
They shot the script for every scene but then also shot a lot of improvised scenes. They also made new scenes while they were filming…it was a continually evolving project and experiment. Nanette did some scenes with small digital cameras that weren’t even in the script at all and eventually used them because they tested so well with audiences.
Drew Barrymore and Justin Long in Going the Distance
Justin Long’s character has an obsession with Top Gun and Tom Cruise in the film and luckily one of the execs is friends with Tom. So to get him to sign off on rights to his image, the exec told him that Drew Barrymore and Justin Long would be screwing right under a poster of him and asked, “You in?”. Tom Cruise said Yeah! I love Drew and Justin!
Going the Distance was a great movie. It’s a romantic comedy for this generation with dirty jokes and all. It’ll have you laughing from beginning to end and quoting the lines afterwards. Here’s a trailer and be sure to check out our Going the Distance Advance Screening List for your chance to see the film early! It comes out Friday, August 27th.
Tags: Drew Barrymore, Geoff LaTulippe, Going the Distance, Justin Long, Nanette Burstein, Tom Cruise
Matthew Fong created advancescreenings.com and is the lead contributor. He watches every type of movie and will try almost anything twice. You can follow him on twitter here: @matthewfong
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