The Anniversary Party marks the feature film directorial debut of award-winning actors Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming who co-direct from a script they wrote together. Written for their friends and shot in 19 days using digital video cameras, The Anniversary Party is a portrait of marriage and friendships, warts and all, flawed and imperfect... a dizzying study of love.
Leigh and Cumming wanted to write a fast-paced exploration of a modern marriage over a 24-hour period that could be shot quickly. They began by sitting around Leigh's kitchen table creating a series of characters based loosely on the people in their own lives — people who had made different choices regarding parenthood, career and relationships. At the center of it all, they created an intriguing married couple —Joe Therrian, a hip British novelist, and Sally Nash, an American film actress. Joe's sudden career shift to movie director combined with a downslide in Sally's career has meant a period of readjustment for them both.
"The writing of this script was amazingly effortless," says Leigh, "I am fascinated by relationships, by how difficult and flawed and beautiful they are, and by the lengths to which people will go to hold on to them."
Adds Cumming: 'The whole thing wrote itself without us really noticing. We wanted to show how the things that we want the most in life — close friendships and great loves — are the very same things that unhinge us the most, that have us behaving badly. We wanted to write a grown-up film about the things grown-ups experience. But, of course, the whole point is that no one's really a grown-up when it comes to understanding love."
"We wanted the movie to have a kind of biting humor so we wrote for the people we know, in the voices we know so well," says Leigh. Explains Cumming: "We molded each character specifically for the actor we had in mind. So Cal was written for Kevin Kline and Skye for Gwyneth, for example. We took into consideration how they each talk, their cadence, their style. So although no one is playing themselves, these characters feel organic because they come from something so real. It was quite a bit of fun to draw from reality and, with our own characters, it even felt slightly shocking and illicit." Early on, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming made the decision to shoot The Anniversary Party on digital video -- but, in doing so, they wanted to defy the trademark gritty, raw digital video look. Prior to writing the script, Leigh had just completed the Dogme digital film The King Is Alive and was impressed by the speed and ease of shooting with digital video. She realized it was a format that might allow her to make an intimate film with her friends, without interrupting their heavily committed work schedules.
"I was really intrigued by the digital video wave and how much fun it was to work like that," comments Leigh. "It's obviously the only way to shoot something so quickly. But we wanted it to look like film. We wanted a great DP. John Bailey was able to give the film a kind of beauty. The richness and depth you can't ever really get with d.v. John got, and got it in 19 days."
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