Michael Douglas as the bingo-
playing Mr Burmeister.
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Why did you decide to make One Night at McCool’s your first feature?
It was a really well-written, character-driven drama. Because I am associated with comedy, I was being given a lot of very light-hearted comedy, but this one had a much deeper sense to it. It was still very funny on the top, but it really made sense on the emotional level as well. I think it also has some movie magic in its structure in the sense that there are different episodes told by different people.
Mainly, though, because it’s a very sexy script; it has characters you can relate to; and it has a good heart. It just shows how narrow-minded and short-sighted men can be always thinking with their... can I say that in a non-dirty way? I guess not! And women always have a second agenda.
Each of the three main characters describes ‘his’ Jewel: how much do you vary your film-making style depending on who is telling the story?
Paul Reiser as Carl and Matt Dillon as Randy.
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That was the tricky part: to make the choice of how similar the flashbacks should be. How should we alter them? Should we alter the costumes, or use totally different camera angles and staging? I wanted the reality within the flashback to be the same, so I wanted the people to be positioned in the same places when they said the various things. But the way they say them and how they look are subtly different. I didn’t want to make it a huge thing, because it’s kind of obvious. And, coming from commercials, it’s so tempting to forget the whole story and just start doing lots and lots of fancy stuff. So I decided really early on that I wanted to focus on the story and the characters and just let the camera be - how can you say? - invisible. I wanted to jump straight into the deep water and just concentrate on the actors.
Did you ever consider letting Jewel tell the story from her standpoint?
Jewel did tell the story in a very early draft, but that was the first thing I took out. I didn’t want her to have her own story: I wanted her to appear only through these men.
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