“I think it was a big juicy thing for all the actors. Liv could be all innocent with John Goodman and she could be raunchy and sexy with Paul Reiser and she could be mature and tough with Matt Dillon. She just loved exploring all these sides”

What appealed to Zwart, meanwhile, was the fact that the characters in the story changed depending on who was narrating it. When it’s Randy, for instance, Jewel is decisive and together, cleaning up his house and taking control of his life. When the storyteller is Carl, Jewel is sex on legs. And when it’s Dehling, she’s all sweet and innocent, like the wife who left him years before.

Nor is it just Jewel who changes. When Dehling is telling the story, Randy is a bullying psychopath and he himself is a smart-suited upholder of the law. Seen by Randy, Dehling is a down-at-heel no-hoper.

“I think it was a big juicy thing for all the actors,” says Zwart. “They had great fun with being the good guy in one and the bad guy in the other. Liv could be all innocent with John Goodman and she could be raunchy and sexy with Paul Reiser and she could be mature and tough with Matt Dillon. She just loved exploring all these sides: she’s a very, very clever actress.”

“One of our favourite movies was To Die For,” adds Segan, “but we really felt that Nicole Kidman came across as very cold and calculating in that movie, and we didn’t want to go that route. If you don’t fall in love with Jewel, you don’t understand why the three men in the movie do. And I give Harald - and especially Liv - the credit for the audience really falling in love with her.

“I think her intention - and she really pulled it off - was not to play Jewel manipulative, in terms of her pretending to be all these people that the men want to see her as, but the men taking this blank slate and reading in what they want. They’re all missing something in their lives and she fulfils that for them.”

Tyler, it quickly becomes clear, was the key to the whole project, and Segan and Zwart both knew it. “If we couldn’t find the right Jewel, we couldn’t make the movie,” says the former. “Then we met with Liv - she was out here to be a presenter at the Academy Awards - and we just fell in love with her. We just knew that she was the one. She was - and I use this word in great affection - much bawdier than I expected.”

One Night at McCool’s shot for eight-and-a-half weeks from mid-August, with three weeks on a soundstage, where the interior of Randy’s house was built, then on location, with suburban Los Angeles - Zwart’s idea of what America is all about, according to Segan - standing in for St Louis, where the film is supposed to take place.

“The significance of St Louis is that it’s middle America,” she explains. “I think people bring a rarefied view when they hear that something is set in Los Angeles or New York. They think, ‘Oh, that could never happen in my town’. And we really wanted it to be very Americana.”

The end result, says Segan, the day after Zwart got to see the editor’s first assemblage of the film (which is scheduled for delivery in April), is very much ‘a Harald Zwart film’. And it doesn’t sound like it will be the last.

“Harald has absolutely taken it to a point that I would never believe that the movie would get to,” she enthuses. “It doesn’t feel like an art movie. It doesn’t feel like an independent movie. It feels like something totally its own.

“I’ve never worked on a film where, after the first week, everybody kept coming to dailies,” sums up the executive, whose previous credits range from Saving Private Ryan (co-producer) to Paulie (producer). “We had people lining up on the floor every day to watch the dailies. I felt like everybody made the same movie and had a great time doing it.”

Furthur Films, USA Films. Prod: Michael Douglas, Allison Lyon Segan; Exec prod: Whitney Green; Dir: Harald Zwart; Scr: Stan Seidel; Ph: Walter Lindenlaub; Prod des: Jon Gary Steele; Cost des: Maritz L Garcia-Roddy; Ed: Bruce Cannon. With Liv Tyler (Jewel Valentine), Matt Dillon (Randy), John Goodman (Detective Dehling), Paul Reiser (Carl Lumpke), Michael Douglas (Mr Burmeister), Andrew Clay Silverstein (Utah/Elmo), Reba McEntire (Psychiatrist), Eric Schaeffer (Greg Spradling), Richard Jenkins (Father Jimmy), Leo Rossi (Joey Dinardo), Andrea Bendewald (Karen Lumpke). International distribution: Good Machine International.