In securing the two actresses, Dolman says he knew instantly what a casting coup had been staged. "The first day that they shot, which was our second day of shooting, it just jumped." Producer Mark Johnson says, "I can’t think of any movie I’ve been involved in where we’ve actually gotten all of the actors, all of our first choices...that’s the script itself doing the work, because we had a first-time director, so they couldn’t look at Bob Dolman and say, ‘Oh, I loved his last 17 movies.’ They just said. ‘I’ve got to play this character."’
Producer Elizabeth Cantillon says, "The script was just leap-off-the-page funny. And it was two great parts for two female actors. You don’t see very many of those scripts these days. It’s hard to get movies made with women. And these were women who had lived their lives and they’d made choices in their lives that there was no going back on. I thought that was intriguing, and I thought really great actresses would think that was intriguing, and I was right."
Johnson adds, "There are lots of screenplays, some of them very good, that rehash other movies or other stories. This - I never read anything like this before. And these women - as original as they were and as funny as they were - they were also women I could understand and believe...I so loved all three of our central characters. You could make a movie based on just one of them."
When the script first began to circulate and word was out that Hawn and Sarandon were attached to star, there was an interesting debate over who would play which role. Johnson says, "Half of our readers said, ‘Oh. I see, so Susan must be playing Suzette,’ and the other half said, ‘no, Goldie’s playing Suzette.’ And they all have very legitimate reasons for saying that. We’re talking about two extremely important, successful actresses of our time. Susan Sarandon and Goldie Hawn...the minute their face appears, you can say. ‘I fell in love with her in this one, or I thought she was fantastic in this.’ So what you do with it is, you take that baggage, and you want to play with it, sometimes even against it..."
That’s exactly what attracted Hawn to play the role of Suzette. "She’s not the type of character that typically crosses my’ desk. She’s chancy...so it gives me an opportunity to sort of delve into a character that I have never played." Sarandon say’s she was drawn to the film’s message. I thought this could be a really’ fun film...the bottom line is it’s about friendship between women.
During the writing process it had not occurred to Dolman to direct, or even to sell the screenplay. His goal was just to write the story’. But once the screenplay was complete, both he and the producers agreed he was the obvious choice to helm. Dolman learned quickly that directing requires a different sort of mentality. "The biggest challenge is trusting that maybe something will happen, but knowing that I’ve only got two or three minutes for that to happen. Whereas with writing. I could try’ it so many different ways...The mood of the production might be, we’re running late, we have to hurry. The mood of the scene might be, we’re making love. And those two things could be so in conflict with each other. The director has to pull them apart, make sure that one mood doesn’t pollute the other."
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