The big new movie of the weekend is Hot Pursuit. Previously named "Don't Mess With Texas," and then for a rather long time titled merely "Untitled Reese Witherspoon/Sofia Vergara Comedy," the Warner Bros./
Starring Reese Witherspoon as a plucky by-the-book local cop and Sofia Vergara as a mob spouse whose courtroom testimony may help bring down a crime lord, the film is the latest of Witherspoon's recent efforts as a producer as well as an actress to create material for herself rather than playing the girlfriend or the sidekick in a male-centric story. Hot Pursuit is also noteworthy in that it is directed by a woman as well. With a handful of feature credits under her belt, including Sandra Bullock's 2009 smash The Proposal, Anne Fletcher is somewhat of a rarity in that she is a female director who has been bouncing from one major Hollywood feature to another with relative regularity.
I was lucky enough to speak with her by phone last week. We discussed the origins of the project, the challenges of making a female-centric film that is explicitly targeted at women, and how Fletcher's long history as a choreographer influenced and shaped her directorial career. For what it's worth, I tried to avoid explicit plot spoilers for the film in question. Anyway, without further ado...
How did you get involved in the project?
Well, Reese and her business partner, Bruna Papandrea, they came to me early on. The president of MGM, John Glickman, who I've done another movie with, for 27 Dresses, came after me to participate and I was excited about all of the people that were involved.
Were Witherspoon and Vergara involved already, when you came aboard?
Reese had a general meeting with Sofia, to see if Sofia would be interested in doing something like that with her, and they hit it off. They listened to a lot of pitches from different writers and from there came the idea of Hot Pursuit.
And the original title was Don’t Mess with Texas?
It's a very catchy name and we're all very familiar with it, but the reason we didn't get it is because the state of Texas created a a litter campaign with the name "Don't Mess with Texas." They own the rights to that name and they will not give it to anybody.
I asked a rather generic and arguably leading question regarding developing and producing a female-centric film in a male-dominated industry. To which she replied…
I'm going to protect the women characters and make sure that they're authentic too. I still want to stay true to what makes women different and not have them be just mimicking what men would do in this type of comedy. The one thing I will say, that I was nervous about when I originally took the movie, and fought against, and won, was that the original script was rated R.
I'm suggesting that it's been done in the industry far too many times and I could see the forest for the trees. There's going to be swearing involved, which is fine. There would be that weird obligatory sexual scene that they're like, "Oh, put that funny sex scene in," or having the two girls doing something like that and, to me, if the movie is being made primarily for women and hopefully for men to really enjoy when they go, women don't want to see that, it's not funny for us. Those scenes, to me, are very silly. We have a lesbian scene in the movie, that I, was one of the things that I tried to say, "How is this going to make the audience laugh, how do the girls that are coming in to see this movie, laugh, because two women kissing, outside of being a lesbian couple, we don't find it funny.
It's his (Jim Gaffigan’s) point of view of what he sees with these two girls. I think, ultimately, it ends up being a smart outcome because Daniella (Vergara’s character) knows that this is an Achilles heel for men, watching two women kiss, and they're in harm's way. The other part of the PG-13 thing, for me, Sofia has such an enormous fan base and people love her and know her so intimately from Modern Family. I did not want to eliminate her fan base, or minimize that. Let's do PG-13, let's find a really funny way for these two women to talk and have a great time doing it. Women are very different than men and that's great. We're different people and genders, and we should be, and we have different things that make us laugh and you need to have the freedom to explore that.
There does seem to be a pattern of seemingly female centric movies that are made almost for the male gaze. One thing I will say is this movie, more or less, did not fall into that trap. There is just enough of that to put in the trailer, and not much more.
You built a franchise in Step Up. You had an enormous smash hit with The Proposal in 2009 and that came out within a week or two of The Hangover, and while The Hangover made more money, overall, The Proposal was almost as leggy throughout the summer of 2009. How did those affect your career?
Well, as you can imagine, any time you have a success, it's an enormous impact in your career. You get more opportunities, you get more awareness and people are paying more attention to you. I make a joke that I don't know what it's like to be a male director, so I can't compare it. I just know what it's like to be me and I've been greeted with open arms and respect and loyalty and treated, I'm hoping, because I don't have anything to compare it to, like I'm just a director like any other director, male or female, and I just feel grateful and lucky with the opportunities that have been afforded to me and the people I get to work with on a daily basis.
They're not coming to me and asking to do Terminator or anything. I don't take insult to that. I feel like there are certain people who do things very, very well and let them do them. If I had an interest to do Terminator, I would put my stake in the ground and fight really hard, but I don't.
So do you feel that you are getting the opportunities to at least make an attempt to get the gigs that you want, or the kinds of movies that you want to make?
Yes, absolutely. Movies that I get excited about, scripts are coming my way. I have a great team of people who are always looking out for stuff that's coming in. They'll always come to me with romantic comedies because I've had great success in that and I wanted to step away from it for a while, just to spread my wings. The Guilt Trip came my way, which I really fell in love with the story so, so much. That ended up being something that I loved with all my heart. It didn't work, successfully, in the box office, but still was a great success for me because it was something that I wanted to make.
There are outtakes at the end of this picture. Was there a sort of a give and take between improvisation of the two leads, and arguably, some of the supporting characters, versus sticking to the script?
We always shoot the written word, we'll always shoot an alternative to a swear word, for our TV version, but also, you never know, the replacement for the swear word, may just be funnier than the swear word. I like all the different colors of dialog sometimes.
Reese and her isms, of her little southern back stuff. She would come up with stuff on the moment, that we would either be rehearsing or shooting and something southern craziness would come out of her that was fantastic. Then, with Sofia, I would have her, Sofia is just brilliant, she will go any which way you want her to, and she stepped up to the plate in the biggest of ways and every time it's still brilliant.
I would shoot a lot of the stuff that was in English, I would shoot it in Spanish, in case we wanted it later, to make something funny. Sometimes, again, with the swear words versus the non-swear words. It's kind of like, maybe the Spanish will be a little funnier than the English or vice versa.
I am a sucker for a gag reel or whatever the hell you're going to give me, I want it, because if you really love the characters, you just want a little bit more of them.
This film, comparatively, is more of an action picture than your previous films. You've got a pretty solid bus chase toward the end of the second half of the picture. You have an extensive background in choreography. Do you believe that your experience as a choreographer helped you in both your directing career overall and in filming the somewhat more action based sequences in the film.
No doubt about it. Regarding, just in general, yeah, staging just even normal, straight scenes that people are talking, I thrive off of and I love and I feel like I absolutely know how the human body works and where they should be standing and moving when they're talking. I was fortunate enough to work with Sandra Bullock in The Proposal, and she is a physical goddess, so I had open reign with her.
Reese and Sofia really understand their bodies and what makes them funny and how they work. The scene where the girls are exiting the bar bathroom, we came in that day and I've already worked out the beats. So, I put this over here and the sink here and this lip here and the toilet there and the towel rack here, so you can just try to lift your legs up and your role is to get your little tiny arms out the window, which you're not going to be able to do, so I physically showed her what to do and she said, "Okay" and we rolled, the first take, and it was magic.
She (Witherspoon) was just a great mimicker, if you can call it that and Sofia just jumped into place, that's where their chemistry and their connection really stands out to me. Like you said, our roles are told through physicality, whether it's beating somebody up or doing a pirouette, it still comes from the same place. Either the opening fight sequence, the opening shoot-out. I knew what the beats were, I basically choreographed it and then said to them, "Now make it better," because I shouldn't have the best idea in the room, I'm just this sad little choreographer. This is your world of stunts, so take it to your level. That's sort of how we work.
The bus sequence was the same thing. I really wanted the girls to be in the bus. I've worked a lot on green screen and it's not my favorite. I'd rather be in a real location. I knew it was possible, so I asked "How do we make this bus moving on the real road, being chased by real people, with the girls in there doing their dialog and their choreography, while they're handcuffed together, shooting and being shot at?" They had the brilliant idea of designing a bus with a drive shaft, where the driver sits underneath the bus with two monitors, and it was another woman, she was amazing, and she drove the bus, while the girls could be on the top, acting with everybody inside and out. That, to me, was a great reward.
And finally, is Enchanted 2 something that's actually on the plate or is that just an IMDb rumor? Is that actually going to happen?
Well, I don't know. They have been wanting to make it forever. I've been attached to it for six years. I would love to be a part of it. I'm not sure where it stands right now. I keep making the joke that if we go any longer, they'll be grandparents.
Do you have another project lined up?
I don't right now. I literally finished this movie and went right into promotion because it's coming out May 8th, so, I have a couple of development things, but nothing ready to go yet. We'll see. I'm excited.
Hot Pursuit arrives in theaters courtesy of Warner Bros. /Time Warner Inc. on May 8th, 2015.
