Director Marc Webb can laugh about some of the feedback he got from studios while pitching his first feature, the smart and soulful romance “(500) Days of Summer.”
At the time it wasn’t so funny.
“One studio note I got said, ‘we really like the script. We want to buy it, but we want to change one thing. It can’t be about a relationship,’” Webb recalls.
Other studios balked at telling a love story from the man’s perspective.
Fox Searchlight liked it more or less as is, and one of 2009’s indie hits was born.
The film, which details the romance between lovestruck Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and mercurial Summer (Zooey Deschanel), comes to DVD and Blu-ray on Dec. 22.
It’s not your typical screen romance, what with a narrator setting the story up and the early sequences letting us know the romance we’re about to see may not have a happy ending.
“Summer” even squeezes in a musical sequence at one point, a bold way to introduce a character losing himself to love.
Webb, who previously directed music videos before tackling “Summer,” says he carefully set the stage for the musical number.
“You earn a license from the audience,” Webb says of the scene, featuring Hall & Oates’ “You Make My Dreams Come True.” “The disclaimer at the beginning of the film tells viewers this isn’t your typical romance.
“We wink at you occasionally,” he says, describing how Tom starts beaming at the beginning of the scene, and his grin becomes infectious to those around him. “We’re slowly introducing the dance sequence to the audience, rather than have everybody break out in song.”
“It’s more about how somebody feels rather than the objective reality of the situation,” he says.
It’s something you don’t see often in most romantic movies, which busy themselves with knotty plots and wildly ridiculous scenarios.
Webb says too many rom-coms today “are facsimiles of a facsimile of something real.”
“They teach you bad lessons,” he adds, noting how in the film “Hitch” the Kevin James character waxes his back and learns to dance and suddenly he’s dating a model.
“It’s a lie and dangerous and bad,” he says, while quickly adding his admiration for “Hitch‘s” star, Will Smith.
Webb’s film earned a tidy $32 million while in theaters, an impressive figure for an independent release. Yet that’s a fraction of what many mainstream romances earn.
“Our movie is about young people in love, the most relatable thing in the world,” he says, but adds the film‘s unconventional approach could have hurt its mass appeal. “People want that fantasy world. We had that on some level, but people were bummed out by the ending.”
But Webb isn’t complaining. His film is garnering some Oscar heat and the movie just earned Golden Globe nominations for Best Musical or Comedy and Best Supporting Actor (Gordon-Levitt).
Not bad for a boy meets girl story bold enough to blaze its own trail.
(Photo: Director Marc Webb shatters the rom-com formula with his indie hit “(500) Days of Summer.” Fox Searchlight Pictures)
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I think this was my favorite film of the year. I was blown away at how well it captured love in your 20’s; the thrills, the enthralling sensuousness, the baffling trials, the heartbreak. If there were nominated for Best Pic, even with 10 nominees, I think I could forgive the Academy for snubbing Dark Knight.
Loved speaking to the director for this post … a really bright fellow and someone very plugged into the storytelling process.