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Amy Heckerling's DVD Premiere, Part II
February 22, 2008

Here’s the second half of my interview with filmmaker Amy Heckerling (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Clueless) on her latest film, the DVD Premiere I Could Never Be Your Woman, which stars Michelle Pfeiffer as a 40-plus-year-old L.A. TV producer with a  daughter who falls for a younger man (Paul Rudd) who happens to be a star on her television show. 

 

VIDEO BUSINESS: You wrote I Could Never Be Your Woman more than a decade ago?
AMY HECKERLING: Not exactly. I sort of doodled around with the idea and then put it down when I did Loser [in 2000]. Then I was writing something for Fox for a while and then I did another draft of it years later, and that was the one that was shown to Michelle [Pfeiffer]. Then a year or so before we made the movie, she had come on and helped get it done.
VB: Were there a lot of changes made to the script from the early drafts? A lot of the material has an early-2000s feel--the WB show, the plastic surgery and so on.
AH: I started out just writing about a whole bunch of things that were going on and making a kind of ‘Mrs. Robinson’ relationship movie. Later on, I decided, ’Let’s lighten this up.’ So then I banged out the relationship

between Mother Nature [played by Tracy Ullman]. Is Mother Nature a person who always wins? Do we all have to give in to her or is it okay to keep fighting? And that was what I was grappling with: Can Michelle’s relationship with the guy work or is she supposed to grow up and not have it work?  
VB: The movie has a lively, colorful appeal. And that a bunch of Clueless cast members are on hand--Paul Rudd, Stacey Dash, Wallace Shawn--makes it almost like it’s an extension of Clueless. Were you consciously referencing that film while you were making this one?
AH: Yes, a bit. When I was making the Clueless TV show, I would get to the lot at Paramount and see all these buildings and everything. And then I would see this like sea of pink and lime green and eggshell blue, and I would say ‘Oh, there’s my set. Just gotta follow the Easter Eggs.’
VB: Some of the sets and costumes really popped off the screen, and it looked like you had as much fun with the editing and music cues.
AH: When it comes to music, there’re always so many things that I wanted and I couldn’t afford and that I had to change at the last minute. The one thing that was cool is that a person who was working on the production in England was close to Robert Smith of The Cure, and they were really wonderful about letting us use a lot of that stuff. And I love them. I had a whole lot of other stuff that didn’t make it, but The Cure did.
VB: You’re a native New Yorker whose most popular films--Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless--are set in Los Angeles. When are we going to see another New York film from you?
AH: I love New York. I’ve been working on something that takes place in New York--it’s a romantic comedy with young people but there’s a lot of stuff in it about the history of the city.
VB: That sounds intriguing.
AH: Well, I’m not spending my money on it, so if it ever gets made then, yeah, it’ll be good.

Posted by Laurence Lerman on February 22, 2008 | Comments (0)