Reese, Ashton’s rom-com comeback tackles love in middle age
The veteran writer behind the hit romantic-comedies Devil Wears Prada, 27 Dresses and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has taken the leap of faith by directing her first-ever feature film.
Aline Brosh McKenna is the director, writer and producer of Netflix’s Your Place Or Mine, which also marks the return of Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher to their genre of “expertise” a.k.a. the rom-com.
Reese plays single mom and accountant Debbie who is based in Los Angeles, while Ashton is the commitment phobe-brand consultant Peter whose life is New York. Their relationship doesn’t start out in the best of circumstances (they have a one-night stand), but they somehow become each other’s constants throughout a two-decade-long friendship, surviving fleeting romances and a failed marriage, and even riding the communication evolution — from handwritten letters, to phone calls, to Blackberries and iPhone Facetime.
So, when they decide to swap homes for a week as Debbie attends school for a career promotion, while Peter offers to “babysit” Debbie’s teen son Jack (played by Wesley Kimmel), it seems just like any other day in the lives of two old friends. Little do they know, this leads to discoveries about each other that will stir not only friction between them, but also embers of a love they’ve never realized but has always been there.
During a recent virtual presscon for Your Place Or Mine which premieres on Netlix come Feb. 10, Aline said that she came up with the rom-com with people who have already experienced more in life in mind. For one, her film’s characters are specifically in their 40s or middle age.
She said, “I wanted to do a romantic comedy for people who have been through something in their lives, and you know, have accumulated some life experience.”
In the production notes, Aline further explained that the reason why she wanted to create a movie for people of a certain age and with more emotional miles on them is because most often in rom-coms, when the lead stars in their 20s end up together, “I sometimes feel like that’s a ‘nice 18 months but ultimately, that’s not the person you’re going to marry.’”
“I feel like love in our current time is complicated and it can be a long, winding road to finding that person,” she reflected.
What she observed is that some middle-aged people already have fixed ideas about who they are and the people they can be with.
“The idea of this movie is that if you’ve been telling yourself a story that limits you, you can tell yourself a different story. You can try things and break out of ideas you might have about your age or the way you look,” Aline said.
“It’s never too late to tell yourself a different story and that might lead you to some unexpected happiness and the courage it takes to take an emotional leap towards someone.”
The first-time director described the film as very personal. And by that she meant that the story drew inspiration from an actual experience with a friend.
According to Aline, the idea for Your Place or Mine began some 12 years ago while she was working in New York and needed a place to stay. She had a bachelor friend at that time living in Los Angeles but had a New York apartment that was lent to her.
Since it was “slightly uninhabited” and was missing some “creature comforts,” she said she started thinking, “It would be funny if I started to live his life in his apartment and get to know the people in his life.”
“While I was there, we were emailing almost as if that was what I was doing… Then I thought, what would happen if he came to stay where I was living and had to be a mom?
“I had this idea for a very long time. What I tend to do is let an idea percolate in my brain and then wait for the right person to pitch it to,” she further said in the production notes.
During the presscon, Aline joked that for the casting, she wanted to “work with unknowns.”
“So, you know, I’m really looking to discover people, as you can see with this cast. Sort of, you know, people you may not have heard of. So I was lucky enough to find these folks,” she quipped.
On a more serious note, she also felt very lucky to have found actors who were willing to play their age.
She was able to pitch the story to her female lead Reese several years ago. “Reese is one of those people who really knows who the writers are. She thinks as a producer much like as an actor. We had been friendly and it was very natural to see if she was interested,” she said.
Aline revealed though that even prior to Your Place or Mine, she has always thought of the rom-com royalty for everything she has ever written. “I can’t think of a movie that I’ve written that I didn’t send to her,” she shared.
As for Ashton, she and the actor had worked together some years back and had been talking about collaborating.
In her own words, everything fell into place like a “magical Rubik’s cube — just a moment when it went click, click, click and it all came together.”
Meanwhile, in addition to writing, directing, and producing the film, Aline also wrote one of the film’s soundtracks Embers.
She explained: “So we used The Cars as sort of Peter’s music, the band The Cars that I had grown up on. But also I noticed that men tend to pick a band or an artist that they love
and then really stick to that.
“And for her (Debbie), we had a bunch of female singer/songwriter-type artists for her, but we wanted a song that was hers. And so, I was lucky enough that Sid who did the composing, and Alan who works with him, invited me in to write a song with them,” she said, referring to film composer Siddhartha Khosla (This Is Us, Only Murders in the Building) and music producer Alan DeMoss (Only Murders in the Building, Queenpins).
“And it was really fun! We spent hours on the phone. And I told them stories about why I had written the movie and sort of some of the experiences that had led me to write it, and what my inspirations were. And we talked a lot,” Aline recalled.
“And then we came up with this idea of Embers, that it’s a relationship that is not in flames at the moment. But it’s still there, and it just needs to be stoked. So, it was really fun.”
Embers is performed by Tiny Habits, a young group of acoustic-folk pop artists from the Berklee School of Music, that they discovered via TikTok.
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