A LOT LIKE LOVE
About the Production
A romantic comedy about romantic obstacles, A LOT LIKE LOVE takes a fresh,
sophisticated and entirely modern look at falling in love. Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet
star as a pair of dynamic, diametrically opposed twentysomethings—Oliver and Emily—
whose initial fateful meeting sets off sparks…then seems to go nowhere. Over the next seven
years, they will continue to meet. But is their relationship simply a good friendship? Is it
destined to be yet another romantic disaster? Or is what they have between them something
A LOT LIKE LOVE?
British director Nigel Cole—whose debut films “Saving Grace” and “Calendar Girls”
became sleeper hits—brings to life the screenplay written by Colin Patrick Lynch, a Los
Angeles-based actor/playwright. The result is a unique twist on the romantic comedy,
unfolding in an era of uncertainty and mobility that keeps young lovers questioning
their every move. It all begins as a young man and woman
meet on a cross-country flight. Oliver (Kutcher) is a brand new college graduate
with an airtight timeline for attaining his
dreams of both business success and finding
true love. Emily (Peet) is a bold, free spirit
drawn to spontaneity and wild extremes. Two
different choices, two incompatible views on
life. They may have hooked up for a brief
moment, but Oliver and Emily clearly don’t
belong together. Or do they?
Though they both move on, Oliver and
Emily nevertheless can’t quite seem to
completely let go. As the two bump into each
other, year after year, in city after city,
through changing careers and different relationships, there always seems to be plenty
keeping them apart. And yet, there’s also something utterly inexplicable pulling them together.
There’s something about the way they laugh together, the way they can talk to each other, the
way they always seem to be there for one another when things are falling apart. So what keeps
getting in the way of what could be romantic destiny?
As Oliver and Emily set off on their own individual paths, A LOT LIKE LOVE moves
across New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco—and down the hilariously meandering road
of modern love. A Touchstone Pictures and Beacon Pictures Presentation in association with
Kevin Messick Productions, the film is directed by Nigel Cole (“Calendar Girls,” “Saving
Grace”) from a screenplay by Colin Patrick Lynch. The producers are Armyan Bernstein and
Kevin Messick; Lisa Bruce is the co-producer; and Charlie Lyons, Zanne Devine and Suzann
Ellis are executive producers.
Crafting the film’s look of shifting and changing worlds behind the scenes are director of
photography John de Borman (“Shall We Dance,” “The Full Monty”), production designer
Tom Meyer (“Catch That Kid,” “Blue Crush”), costume designer Alix Friedberg (“Cursed,”
“Around The Bend”) and editor Susan Littenberg (“13 Going on 30”).
Finding LOVE:
About the Origins of the Film
Love in the 21st century is rarely straightforward. On the contrary, it tends to be messy,
complicated and filled with comical obstructions and impediments that sometimes make it a
wonder that it happens at all. Screenwriter Colin Patrick Lynch wrote a romantic comedy that
reflects the long and winding road that so many people must careen down to find connection
in today’s chaotic world.
Lynch follows Oliver and Emily over a seven-year period—from young adulthood to the cusp
of their 30s—constantly moving from place to place, shifting careers, changing partners and
even redefining their dreams as they begin to figure out what life is really about. All the while,
they are each searching for true love—searching everywhere, that is, except the one place they
might find it: standing right in front of them again and again in the form of an old friend.
Lynch, a Los Angeles-based playwright who had yet to have a feature film produced, turned
to an old college friend, producer Kevin Messick, who read his script and fell in love with it.
“I thought Colin’s script had such a realistic way of tackling the chaos and messiness of
contemporary relationships,” he says. Messick was determined to get Lynch’s debut project off
the ground.
When director Nigel Cole read the screenplay he was quickly seduced. Cole saw the story as
an opportunity to take a fresh look at the traditional screwball romance—focusing on how two
people finally come together in a world that seems to keep yanking them in opposite directions.
“I had been looking for a romantic comedy to do for ages, and I was almost despairing until
I was sent this script,” recalls Cole. “What excited me about it is that it reminded me of the
great old-fashioned romantic comedies I’ve always been enamored with, but it had a very
contemporary sensibility. I like that it’s a tale about real people you recognize in a real type of
love that is as blind, unpredictable and out of control as real love, much to our chagrin, almost
always is.”
A rising new talent in mainstream comedy, Cole had already directed two back-to-back
sleeper hit comedies about middle-aged women breaking out of their molds—“Saving Grace,”
in which Brenda Blethyn plays a woman who unwittingly becomes involved in the cannabis
business, and “Calendar Girls,” about a group of women who make the bold decision to pose
nude for charity. Now, Cole himself was ready to break out and do something new.
He continues: “A LOT LIKE LOVE is quite unusual because most romantic comedies are
structured so that they essentially spend two hours building to a kiss and end with the very
start of a relationship. This one starts right away with a kiss and then the fun of the story comes
in the surprising developments that come after that when these potential lovers don’t come
together. It’s really a story of bad timing—Oliver and Emily keep meeting over and over but
it’s always the wrong moment for them to fall in love, for one reason or another. It begs the
question of what happens when a chance encounter doesn’t lead to the people involved taking
a chance, which seemed like a wonderful starting point. The minute I finished reading it, I
rang my agent and said, ‘You have to get me this movie.’”
Cole came to Los Angeles and met with producer Kevin Messick and writer Colin Patrick
Lynch and the three agreed to work together to get the film made.
Now, with Cole on board, Messick was able to take the script to Armyan Bernstein at
Beacon Pictures—who was also won over by the romantic comedy’s blind-to-romance charms.
“From the minute we started reading the script, we loved the premise,” says Bernstein. “It
was funny, enchanting and seemed very relevant to today’s audiences. We were also thrilled to
find out Nigel Cole would be involved. He has shown himself to be very talented and I think
his uniquely elegant sense of style really suits this material.”
Adds co-producer Lisa Bruce: “Another thing we loved is the realism of the story and its
style. You often see romantic comedies with this very clever banter that doesn’t have a whole
lot to do with the way people truly talk. Oliver and
Emily are definitely witty and playful with each
other, but they speak the way real people speak. I
think you really relate to them as these great friends
who like hanging out together but aren’t quite sure
how their lives are supposed to intertwine. There’s
an exciting sense of watching real, ordinary people
struggle to figure out if they’re in love.”
Bruce summarizes: “The process of falling in
love and falling out of love and falling back in love
is definitely a timeless Hollywood theme. But the
way the characters go through this age-old dance in
A LOT LIKE LOVE is very fresh.”
Being LOVE:
Casting Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet as The Couple That Almost Wasn’t
As A LOT LIKE LOVE began to swing into high gear, it was obvious that the core of the
entire project would lie in the casting. The story would require finding a pair of actors able to
embody a couple as energetic, fun-loving and ultimately flummoxed by one another as Emily
and Oliver.
“There is really only one key to all romantic comedies—and that is chemistry,” explains
director Nigel Cole. “So, from the beginning, the most important focus for everyone involved
in A LOT LIKE LOVE was to find an actor and an actress who could bring to life the very
specific chemistry between Oliver and Emily with both humor and realism.”
The filmmakers dove into a concerted search for the duo, searching for two stars who could
highlight Oliver and Emily’s odd-couple contrasts—from his cool and collected business
ambitions to her wild and crazy desires to live a life of rebellion and creativity.
Quite suddenly, what seemed like an overwhelming process came to an end when the
filmmakers saw rising stars Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet read together. The room was
instantly charged by their comic repartee and easy way of bouncing off of one another.
“Within about five seconds of watching Ashton and Amanda, we simply knew,” remembers
Cole. “There was just something about them—the way they made each other laugh, the way
they seemed to understand one another on an instinctual level. Right from the start, they really
embodied both the connection and the friction between Oliver and Emily that makes them
perfect romantic foils. And if you’ve got that magic in a romantic comedy, you’re already half
way there.”
Adds producer Armyan Bernstein: “Ashton has a wonderful ability to be charming and
appealing at the same time as being self-deprecating. I don’t want to overstate it, but there are
times when he has that Cary Grant quality. Amanda was also always surprising us with the
honesty and humanity she brought to her character. Together, they were able to bring to the
story weight and dignity as well as a lot of light-hearted fun and joy.”
For Ashton Kutcher, one of today’s most popular comedic and dramatic screen stars, the
film’s unusual love story was an immediate draw. “It’s a story about how sometimes great
things happen in the most illogical of ways and at completely the wrong time. And since life
is really like that, the script really struck me when I read it,” he explains. “I like that it asks
the question: What is it that makes two people click or not click when they meet each other?”
Yet, Kutcher also saw the story as being about more than just the fuzzy line between two
people staying casual friends or diving into happily-ever-after. “I really see it as being about
two people trying to grow up as best as they can in a world where you can’t grow up fast
enough. To me, it’s very much about the way people live their lives today,” he says.
Kutcher also developed a deep affinity for Oliver, who he thinks is typical of many young
college graduates who are chomping at the bit to create the life of their dreams. Oliver starts
out with a concrete plan for everything in his life—and isn’t willing to budge from his
blueprint when he meets someone like Emily, who just doesn’t fit in the scheme.
“When we first meet Oliver, he’s at a point where he’s got his degree and he’s facing this
classic question we all face of ‘Now what?’ He’s waiting for the world to come to him,”
Kutcher observes. “He has this idealistic scenario that first you get the job, then you get the
career, then the house and finally the girl—and that’s the way you obtain the American Dream.
He’s very conservative and cautious. But then he meets Emily, who is really the opposite of
him in every way. She lives in the moment and she is very much about moving in the fast lane
and having a great time. So there’s definitely an attraction there but they also really push one
another’s buttons. I liked that you could always see things going either way for the two of them.”
Though he always liked the script, it was the audition with Amanda Peet that sealed the deal
for Kutcher. “It was really because of her that I wanted to do this movie so strongly,” he
explains. “When she came in and read with me, it was like ‘Okay, now we have to do this.’ I
found that Amanda has great comedic timing, but she’s also not afraid to be human, and that
makes her wonderful as Emily. I felt really fortunate to work with her.”
In one of Kutcher’s most vulnerable and comic scenes, he rushes to Emily’s Los Angeles
apartment, hoping to serenade her with a Bon Jovi song. Though Kutcher can both sing and
play guitar, Nigel Cole implored him to do the kind of semi-competent job that the tightly
wound Oliver was likely to do in trying to be a spontaneous romantic.
“I realized that I couldn’t even practice singing the song or it would be too polished,”
says Kutcher. “I just had to let it happen in
the moment.”
Comments Cole: “Ashton brought a great
deal of heart and passion to that moment so that
you really feel for Oliver. Despite being a very
good singer, he was able to hit quite a few
really bad notes. I thought he did it brilliantly.
He found exactly the right tone, riding that
wonderful line between being funny and being
truly poignant.”
For her part, Peet was inspired to play Emily
because she found the character—who starts out as a spunky punk rocker, only to discover a
different path—so true to life. “She reminded me of people I knew back in college; you know,
those girls who wore all black and had this sort of angry edge to them and were very
concerned with being cool,” explains Peet. “And it was really interesting to me that this kind
of girl would meet someone like Ashton’s character, who is so straitlaced and normal, and not
really know how to handle their connection.”
Peet adds: “I guess the script got me interested because it’s definitely not your run-of-themill
romantic comedy. It reminded me of a ‘When Harry Met Sally’ for this generation.”
Like Kutcher, Peet became even more inspired by their on-screen chemistry together.
“Ashton and I naturally have this great sort of contentious repartee with one another,” she
observes. “Of course, it’s hard for me to imagine how anyone could not fall in love with Ashton.
He’s so winsome and sparkly and magnetic. I
have to keep reminding myself that Emily isn’t
that won over by him—that she just doesn’t see
him as fitting with who she is in life.”
She continues: “I think we both felt we had
a wonderful opportunity with these roles to
really show the different stages of love, from
resistance to friendship to lights-out romance.
Right from the start we had such a great time
with the opening scenes where Emily and
Oliver can’t stand each other and yet…they can’t seem to stop talking to one another and
engaging with each other. We’ve all been through something like that.”
Also winning Amanda Peet over was Nigel Cole. “I’m just mad about Nigel,” she says. “He
has an incredible sense of what’s funny but also manages to make the film feel really romantic.
I feel like Nigel’s making movies that are very different from other movies you see right now.
It’s not that his films aren’t edgy, because I think they are, but there’s something very human
and charming about his style that is so wonderful and unique.”
With Kutcher and Peet cast, the filmmaker began to fill in the supporting characters who
wind in and out of Oliver and Emily’s lives through the seven-year span of the story. One of
Oliver’s closest confidantes throughout is his brother Graham, who happens to be deaf and
communicates with Oliver in sign language. To portray the role authentically, deaf actor
Tyrone “Ty” Giordano was cast—on the heels of starring on Broadway as Huck Finn in the
revival of “Big River.”
“Everyone was raving to me about what a great actor Ty was,
and from the minute he was on the set I realized they were right,” notes Nigel Cole. “He
all so turned out to be a really lovely guy helpful, smart and sensitive, and he and Ashton
hit it off right away so that there was this authentic sense of
them being brothers.”
Giordano loved that the focus of the character is fully on his
relationship
with Oliver and that Graham’s deafness never even comes up as a topic of conversation. “Graham is a
character who just happens to be deaf but it’s not what his
character is about, which is great,” says the actor. “I loved the
script because when I read it, the interaction between Oliver and
Graham reminded me exactly of how me and my brother relate.”
To keep up with Giordano, Ashton Kutcher spent several months learning American Sign
Language before production began. “My own brother has a slight hearing impairment so when
we were kids, I learned a bit of sign language,” Kutcher explains. “I forgot most of it but it came
back as I began to take classes. It was something that I thought was really important to creating
Oliver, because he has to have a great flow when he talks in sign language with Graham.”
Nigel Cole found the scenes between Oliver and Graham to provide a great counterpoint to
the scenes between Oliver and Emily. “There’s this wonderful kind of silence when Oliver and
Graham are together,” says Cole. “I think there’s a real poetry and ease to their interaction that
was great to capture.”
Playing Graham’s girlfriend, Carol, is
Broadway actress Melissa van der
Schyff, who had played Ty Giordano’s
sweetheart on Broadway in “Big River.”
Nigel Cole loved their chemistry
together on stage and hoped to bring it to
the screen. Says van der Schyff: “I think
Nigel was hoping to capture this very
strong bond of love and trust that
Graham and Carol have. They still have
a lot to learn but they know what they
want, unlike Oliver and Emily, who feel something but aren’t quite sure what to do about it!”
Heading up Emily’s circle of support is her best friend Michelle, played by Kathryn Hahn,
who was drawn to the realistic portrait of a friendship that lasts through all the big changes of
early adulthood. “I think what’s great about Michelle and Emily is that they are the kind of
friends you see all the time who have gone in completely different directions, but they still
keep coming back to each other in tough times,” Hahn explains. “They’re almost like sisters
in that way, but it can be a tricky situation getting along with a friend who wants different
things from life. A LOT LIKE LOVE is filled with tricky situations that lead to love—which
is what makes it so much fun.”
Rounding out the cast are a host of up and coming young stars including Taryn Manning as
Oliver’s combative younger sister, Ellen; Kal Penn as Oliver’s “Diaperush.com” business
partner, Jeeter; Ali Larter as Emily’s competitive friend, Gina; Josh Stamberg as Michelle’s
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Being LOVE
husband, Michael; and Gabriel Mann and Jeremy
Sisto as two in Emily’s long chain of boyfriends.
Designing LOVE:
About the City-Hopping Production
With a story that shuttles through time, space
and dizzying life changes as Oliver and Emily
take seven years to finally figure out what they
felt the very first time they met, the visual design
of A LOT LIKE LOVE had to be as whirling and
shifting as Oliver and Emily’s relationship.
To capture the full scope of the tale’s many turns, director Nigel Cole used more than 55
locations, from New York’s Chinatown to Los Angeles’ El Matador Beach. From the start, the
filmmakers knew the production would have to be just as jet-setting and mobile as Oliver and
Emily’s lives. Explains producer Kevin Messick: “When you’re telling a story about two
people who are in constant motion and constantly meeting each other in different places,
times and situations, a good part of the production becomes trying to capture that sense of
kinetic excitement.”
Adds producer Armyan Bernstein: “The story of A LOT LIKE LOVE takes place during a
period of seven years that were packed
with cultural events—a period that
traverses from Clinton to Bush, through a
major economic fall, through different hair
styles, clothing styles, music styles and
lifestyles. And of course what’s most
interesting is that the attitude of our
characters also changes over time—so
there has to be a real sense of both an
evolving world and an evolving friendship
throughout the film.”
To make all these transitions—both in the external world and the internal lives of Emily
and Oliver—come to life, Cole worked closely with director of photography John de Borman
and production designer Tom Meyer.
For de Borman, the task at hand was to subtly reveal time marching forward and emotions
shifting in and out as Oliver and Emily’s relationship goes from cool flirtation to tight
friendship to something perhaps a lot like love. To do this, de Borman begins the film with
saturated, eye-popping colors and plenty of visual chaos, then slowly evolves the look into a
warmer, more relaxed style that reflects the characters maturing and changing.
Cole and De Borman previously collaborated on Cole’s first film, “Saving Grace,” and
developed a kind of shorthand communication that blossomed during A LOT LIKE LOVE.
“We got to a point where we really didn’t even have to speak to each other,” says Cole. “John
just seems to know what I like and he makes it happen seamlessly. I think the film looks
gorgeous and it’s all down to him.”
Meanwhile, production designer Meyer had the challenge of revealing Emily and Oliver’s constantly changing lives through their changing surroundings. He began by talking
extensively with Nigel Cole about the characters’ backgrounds. “I really wanted Emily’s world
and Oliver’s world to reflect who they are, where they come from and how they change,” he
explains. “A big part of the film, of course, is contrasting the very different life choices that
Oliver and Emily make right off the bat. Oliver wants life to proceed in a straight line—he has
all his ducks in a row and that’s something you see in his surroundings, while Emily’s life takes
more unusual twists and turns, which is reflected in the kinds of Bohemian neighborhoods in
which she lives.”
He continues: “So, in New
York, you have Oliver’s world,
which is the Upper East Side
around Columbia, and then
Emily’s world, which is the
Lower East Village. In Los
Angeles, Oliver spends time
with his family in the San
Fernando Valley while Emily
winds up on the funkier east
side of Hollywood and
Silverlake. It’s a running
theme throughout.”
One of Meyer’s biggest tasks was finding a way to subtly move the characters, not only from
city to city but through time. “It’s much harder to have 1996 look like the past than to have, say,
the 1950s look like the past,” notes Meyer. “The immediate past is a much more personal thing
than the distant past, so you have to be more careful. You can’t take as many liberties.”
Two of Meyer’s favorite designs were for iconic romantic locations: the Brooklyn Bridge
and the magical desert landscape of Joshua Tree. Explains Meyer: “It wasn’t written into the
script that Oliver and Emily would wind up underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, but it just
seemed to make sense in that neighborhood. Manhattan can be such a romantic place, and
when Nigel, John de Borman and I went to look at the bridge, it was beautiful. But we felt like
we needed to add an extra touch. So my team designed some charming streetlamps to work
with the structure of the promenade. And then John created this beautiful crane shot where you
see Oliver and Emily walking up the railing and then—bling!—the lights come on. It’s like
this visual exclamation point and it worked beautifully.”
When it came to the scenes in Joshua Tree, Meyer also had to get creative, re-creating the
world-famous national park on a soundstage. “The problem was that it’s a night scene and it
just wouldn’t have been feasible to light up 100 square miles of nature to do the scene!” Meyer
says. “So we built this wonderful miniature desert on a stage the size of a football field.”
As Meyer worked on the ever-shifting locations, costume designer Alix Friedberg was
integrating the characters’ clothing into the mix. “Right away, Nigel, John and Tom explained
to me the concept of creating two different worlds for Oliver and Emily, so I started from that,”
she explains. “Ultimately, each place and each different pocket of time has its own palette and
its own tone.”
Friedberg knew she had to create the strong divergence between Oliver and Emily from the
very first scene. “We had a lot of fun with those clothes,” she says. “Emily is in this rocker,
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Designing LOVE
Gothic, ’90s grunge outfit that looks great on Amanda, and Ashton as Oliver is very funny and
right out of Southern California’s casual culture with these bland khaki shorts and a bad
sweatshirt. You get the feeling right away that they don’t exactly match, even if they seem to
have something between them.”
She continues: “A lot of Emily’s early clothes we bought at thrift
stores. Then, over time, Emily abandons her need for shock value
and her look changes. Oliver’s look changes much more subtly. In
the beginning a lot of his clothes were dyed so that they would look
very worn, like good old comfy things he had been wearing for a
long time. Even when he has money, he’s not the type to run out
and buy flashy stuff. He’s very much an Everyman character—so
we bought a lot of clothes just at the local department store.”
For Friedberg, a large part of the pleasure in A LOT LIKE
LOVE was working with Amanda Peet and Ashton Kutcher on
designing their characters’ duds. “I felt really lucky to work with
the two of them,” she summarizes, “because they were both really
into thinking about their characters and what they would and wouldn’t wear. It was a true
collaboration and that is always the best way.”
Adding to the film’s look, feel and ever-changing moods is a soundtrack that reflects A
LOT LIKE LOVE’s shifting eras with authentic dance, pop and radio ballads from each of the
periods covered in the film—from the freewheeling ’90s to current sounds of the early 21st
century. Woven to highlight the character’s emotions, personalities and confusion in love, the
soundtrack includes the lush romantic ballad “Brighter Than Sunshine” from rising star
Aqualung; “Breathe (2 am),” a hauntingly melodic look at life’s uncertainties from new singersongwriter
Anna Nalick; as well as tracks by Third Eye Blind, Smash Mouth, Eagle-Eye
Cherry, The Cure, Hooverphonic, Ray LaMontagne, Chicago, Groove Armada, Travis and Jet.
Shooting a story that takes place over seven years posed many challenges to both cast and
crew. “We couldn’t shoot the scenes in order because it was too inefficient,” explains Nigel Cole.
“So we might shoot for a day in Emily’s apartment and do several different scenes—maybe one
that’s in 1997 and another in 1999, and in one she has short hair and in another she has long
hair—and there was just an enormous amount of detail for everyone to keep track of with all
these jarring transitions. It could get pretty exhausting at times, doing all this time travel!”
Yet even amidst all these shifts, it
was clear to everyone that there had
to be one steady component
between Oliver and Emily no matter
when, where, how or why they
meet: the ineffable feeling of
mysterious, inexplicable, but
undeniable connection between
them.
Summarizes Nigel Cole: “The real
fun of our story is in how Oliver and
Emily connect and then reconnect
and reconnect and reconnect until at
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Designing LOVE
last they really find one another for good. A lot of what we did on screen was to try to recreate
this kind of verbal and emotional tennis match that goes on between them—this battle of
missed opportunities over seven years which eventually leads them to discover their love for
each other.”
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