Interview by Fred Topel

Nancy Meyers was once part of the Meyers/Shyer writing team that produced hits like Father of the Bride and Private Benjamin. Partnered with writer/director Charles Shyer until their divorce, she began a directing career with their last collaborated script, The Parent Trap. On her own, she has directed the hit What Women Want, based on her rewrite of the original script. This month, her latest ensemble comedy, Something’s Gotta Give hits theaters.

Something’s Gotta Give began as Untitled Nancy Meyers Project. It tells the story of a heart attack victim (Jack Nicholson) who dates younger women. He falls in love with his latest girlfriend (Amanda Peet)’s mother, who happens to be dating his doctor (Keanu Reeves). It’s a romantic comedy with a demographic not usually explored by Hollywood – those over 50.

Meyers gave an interview while still finishing the film. We reached her by cell phone on her way to drop off her daughter at school, then head to the editing room. It was enough time to cover the details of her latest script, with a bit of career history and thoughts on the writing process.

How did you decide on the title? Oh, because it was untitled? I never did really. It got to the point where Jeff Blake came to me and said, “You’ve got to pick a title. We have to put a trailer out.” And I really tried my hardest to get him to put a trailer out with no title because I don’t really think you remember the title on a trailer. I just think you say you want to see the Jack Nicholson/Diane Keaton movie. You don’t necessarily leave the theater remembering the title of those seven movies you just saw trailers of. So, pretty much I was told I had to lock in on something and that was sort of the title du jour. I’m not convinced it’s a great title for the movie.

Where did it come from in the first place? It came from the teaser trailer. They used the song, “Something’s Gotta Give” in the teaser trailer, which made us think of it as a title for the movie. Seriously, that was sort of the last one we’d all talked about. It happened sort of at the time when we said we have to pick a title. So, it’s sort of like how Arnold became governor. It was the right choice on that day.

How does a romantic comedy present a unique view of relationships when there are so many out there? Well, this is a movie about people falling in love late in life. I wouldn’t be comfortable writing it in any way other than as a romantic comedy. I think it’s how I write, so to me, there was no choice in should it be a drama or should it be a romantic comedy. I think as a drama, it’d probably have very few people going to see it.

Does it take a woman to write a story about older couples? I don't know. It took a woman, but I don't know if it takes a woman. I mean, I haven’t seen any other scripts like this. I don't know that a man couldn’t write a movie on the subject. I don't think he would write one like this one because this movie is very much from Diane’s character’s point of view as well as from Jack’s, and I would imagine if a man were writing it, the woman would be more of a secondary character who came into his life, and he actually comes into her life.

When you get actors like Nicholson and Keaton, do they take over the characters? Take over? You mean, do they embody them?

Did either of them do something drastically different than you imagined for the characters? Not at all. No, no, no. I wrote with them in mind, so they performed it as I had hoped and certainly beyond my dreams in terms of their ability to be so natural at it. At times, I watch the movie and I think they’re making it up. They have incredible chemistry and they’re great actors. And they can say a written line like it’s not written. That’s really wonderful. I think they’re both not dissimilar. There are parts of them that are in these characters, so I think that was a really good thing for us all.

Did you know you had them when you were writing? No, I didn’t. I knew that they were both interested, but not until they read it, I didn’t have them.

Does knowing you’re going to direct change the way you write? No, I don't think so. I mean, I’m pretty specific even with myself. So I follow the script very, very carefully. I rarely deviate from how I described how the scene takes place. I don’t write it as a blueprint and then improvise on that when I get there. I would. I’m not rigid about it. But I don’t just use it as a blueprint. I very carefully follow what I wrote because I’m the most vein about the script when I’m writing. Once you start directing, there are so many other things that come into your life every day in terms of just moviemaking, that when I look at the script and I see how I described she’s sitting in the chair and what her attitude is, it just locks me back into what the scene has to be. And I write those things in the script so I get them and they do them. Everybody knows what’s happening in every scene.

Were there any revisions on this film? Hardly. Word changes or if I couldn’t get a location that’s exactly like what I wrote, I’ll rewrite it to sound like a location I’m in. But there was no substantial rewriting at all.

Is this the first script you’ve written solo? An original, yeah. I did a massive rewrite on What Women Want by myself, massive. But it’s the first original script I’ve written by myself, yes.

How is the process different than a collaboration? Well, it’s much lonelier. And when I worked with Charles, we talked and talked and talked for months, just talking. So I sort of don’t know another way to do it, so I ended up just writing and writing all the conversations because I needed to say all those things and I didn’t want to actually obviously talk out loud. I would write my side of our conversation, what would have been a conversation with a collaborator. And by doing that, it was really very helpful because I ended up with an 88 page outline that turned into the script. So, it’s interesting writing alone because you can never get off the hook. You can never toss the ball to somebody else or you can never say that bad idea hoping they’ll make it into a good idea. It’s like playing tennis with a wall. It just keeps coming back to you, so you’re pushing yourself all the time. There’s never anybody else to ease the load and I found it exhausting actually. But you also get to have your own ideas remain in a purer way.

Did any of your conversations get long, or did they stay within reasonable scene length? Long? Oh God, my first draft was exactly 250 pages. I didn’t have brads deep enough, long enough to get through the script.

How did you cut that down? It took me about eight or nine drafts. Just keep going. I think from the first draft to the second, I cut about 70 pages. It’s just like making the movie. I’m now editing it and I thought, “How am I going to get two hours and 45 minutes down to two hours?” It was the same kind of thing again. How do you do it? You just start tearing away at it and you can’t do it all at once. It’s impossible to see what it is at first. You just keep taking away and taking away and it begins to shape up. Story, you know, you just keep following story.

Is any of the story semi-autobiographical? Yes. She’s a writer. She writes romantic comedies. She’s a playwright. She’s single. She’s divorced. She’s a mother. And she finds herself in a relationship late in life and all those things have happened to me. I am a lot of the things she is. Our bios are not that different. But the situation that happened to her and how it happened to her, never happened to me.

What is your writing regimen? Usually I begin around 10, write ‘til about seven. I put in a long day. I’ll take a walk, I eat at a certain time. This script was exhausting to me because it is more personal and I did fall asleep every day after lunch for about 20 minutes. And then I’d regenerate after that. I have a pretty rigid kind of schedule that I kept to. I did that for about 10 months.

Has that schedule changed over the years? Did it used to be lighter? No. My work with Charles, we put in long hours. We really did, always.

What drives your writing – character, story or theme? All of it, really. I don’t always know any of those things in the beginning. I don’t always know what the theme is. I have something I sort of want to say, but it evolves. It’s a process. It’s always interesting to see what it becomes, what it is I really do want to say. It isn’t always crystal clear in the beginning. And the characters of course have to evolve and help tell that story, so they all work together.

Did Something’s Gotta Give start out as something different than it ended up? Well yeah, I don’t have it all in my head at first, so it does because I remember when I pitched it to Jack, I really only had the idea up through the first act. And I knew that they would end up together, but I really didn’t know how I would get that to happen. And the character played by Keanu Reeves evolved when I felt the need for another character. He wasn’t crystal clear to me at first who he was going to be. I did want a younger man. I wanted the Diane character to have a relationship with a younger man, but I didn’t know how to integrate him into the movie. He ended up becoming Jack’s doctor, because Jack has a heart attack. So it became a really nice way for them to always see each other because Jack’s recuperating in her house. So it brought them together. But I didn’t have all that at first.

How important to you is format? Are you by the book? Is there any other way to do it? I totally stick to it.

I’ve seen some that deviate. How much can a writer play with that? I don't know why you’d have a desire to play with it. I think the format gives you your boundaries. You know what it’s supposed to look like and what it’s supposed to read like. It’s never crossed my mind to alter that. There’s no advantage to changing the format, I don't think.

Was it ever hard to let Charles direct your material? No, not at all. He’s been enormously collaborative. I suppose had he been one day my writing partner and the next day “the director,” that would have been difficult, but he never really ever made it feel like we weren’t continuing to work as a team.

What did it take to get your first directing gig? I had wanted my children to be old enough where it would be okay for me to work those hours. I wasn’t really comfortable doing it until they reached a certain age. I don’t love producing. I don't think it’s the great job on a movie certainly, so at a certain point, I got a little bored with it and wanted to step up to the plate. He knew that and he understood and he felt I had been there as his partner all these years. It was time to switch hats. So between us, it was fine. And we had written a screenplay called Love Crazy that Disney gave the go ahead to and that was the one I was supposed to direct but the casting fell through on it at the last minute. And I think we maybe had already written Parent Trap or we were going to do Parent Trap and someone else was going to direct it. I think that’s what the plan was. We had written is and were going to produce it and get someone else to direct it. When Love Crazy fell through, I really did want to direct so I jumped into that. And I had a 10-year-old daughter at the time and it was really a great thing for her that I was doing that and that meant a lot to me.

Have you learned about directing from being on film sets? I’ve only been on the sets of my films. I’ve never really had any access to anybody else’s movies and I learned everything that way.

Should all screenwriters try to direct? I think if they feel a need to, they should try to, yes. If they’re comfortable having someone else direct their material, and they’re okay with that, then writing is a great life. Directing is not a great life. So if they’re okay with that… I wouldn’t be okay with that. But if someone else can accept what will happen to their movie, even with great intentions, it will change. It will change and if they’re okay with that, then I shouldn’t say everybody needs to but I think it is the final draft, getting to direct the movie.

What made movies like Father of the Bride hit with audiences and movies like I Love Trouble and Once Upon a Crime less successful? I think Father of the Bride really touched people and I think they related to family and I think Steve was perfectly cast in it. It was pretty funny, and I think it confirmed the best in us. It was sort of an idealized family and how we all would like to be in a world where dysfunctional families are always put on screen. It was not a dysfunctional family and I think there are a lot of families that are not dysfunctional, where there is that kind of love. And it was a movie about a father’s love for his daughter and I think that is a very real thing. I think fathers like seeing it confirmed that men are great fathers, and I think that girls loved being the object of that kind of love. I Love Trouble I think never had a chance. We had a very unfortunate relationship with the star and we were really unable to execute the script the way we saw it. So, it was a very unusual situation for us. It was the only noncollaborative relationship we ever had with an actress and as a result, everybody got screwed. Nobody got to do their best work. And Once Upon a Crime is a movie we did a rewrite on. I never saw the movie. It was a quick rewrite job. I guess we did enough work to get credit, but it was not a film that I’m familiar with.

How careful are you when you rewrite other people’s scripts? I don't know what you mean by being careful with it. If I’m being asked to rewrite something, it’s because what’s there generally does not work and will not get made without the work that I do on it. For example, What Women Want was not a movie that was going to get made. That had a terrific idea and I thought the execution wasn’t good enough and the characters weren’t good enough, so I felt I had the liberty to change it. It’s what I was being asked to do.

What was different about the original script? Here are the characters that were not in the original: Helen Hunt’s character was not in it, Alan Alda was not in it, Marisa Tomei's character was not in it, the suicide girl was not in it. It did have a male lead and he did have a teenage daughter, but the love story was not there, the relationship with the boss. But their premise of a man who could hear what women think, and he did work in an advertising agency, I kept that because I thought that worked. And I thought the fact that he had a daughter was good. But my character had grown up in Las Vegas. I gave him a whole other background. I don't think I kept any dialogue.

Who would he have hooked up with if not the Helen Hunt character? In the original, he was dating a girl who was a struggling photographer who worked in a coffee shop. She was a waitress I think.

How has comedy changed since the ‘80s? I don't know that it has. I mean, my first movie was 1980, Private Benjamin. And I don’t really feel that the movie I just finished writing is very different comedically from it at all. There’s a lot of great people writing comedy now, but it's different I suppose. There are no restrictions on anything now, obviously. The Something About Mary kind of comedy, which I thought was absolutely brilliant and hilarious, was not a movie that would have gotten made 20 years ago. I think it’s been very freeing actually to lose some of these restrictions. Is it the same as a Billy Wilder comedy? No, it’s different. It’s just different. There’s more jokes and less charm I would say in comedy over the years. It’s more joke oriented I suppose. Big ideas, big premise ideas, big set pieces. But I think there’s always room for a different kind of comedy. Over the weekend, I was watching Plains, Trains and Automobiles and it was just so hilarious, so wonderful. There hasn’t been a movie like that in a long time, that kind of comedy. Splash was a great comedy from the ‘80s. Big was a great comedy, Broadcast News was a great comedy in the ‘80s. Pretty classy movies, pretty elegantly written. But I find American Pie, I haven’t seen the other two, like the first one was hilarious, just absolutely hilarious. But it’s different, obviously quite different.

Forgive the cliché, but did you face any challenges being a female writer? Well, for almost 20 years I was in a partnership with a man, so I don't know what it would’ve been like as a woman with a solo career. And I don't know if it would’ve been more difficult. I know in the beginning, back in the early ‘80s, I did feel protected by Charles as a filmmaking team. But in terms of writing, I didn’t feel any prejudice. I think Hollywood likes a good script. I don't think they’re going to care who writes it. I think if you begin to feel that prejudice, then you join the ranks of producing and directing. I never can really remember in any studio meetings where any executives would defer to Charles. I don’t remember that being true.

Would you ever write with Charles again? No, that’s not going to happen. We’re not a writing team anymore. We haven’t written anything for five years and we’ve taken different paths actually. He’s just written a screenplay with Elaine Pope that’s a remake of Alfie. It’s terrific. He’s got Jude Law and he’s directing that now.

Any advice for up and coming screenwriters? I think it’s a mistake to write something you think people will like or a combination idea or this year’s version of last year’s movie. I don't think you’ll ever get noticed doing that. I think you’re only going to get noticed by following your own instincts and doing original work and writing the thing that only you can write.