Once he had put his cast together, DeGrazier drew on his theatre experience for a longer-than-usual rehearsal period, during which he made extensive use of improvisation to ensure that the four lead actors knew their characters inside out. “I worked with them so that they got to know their characters and the character’s relationship to every other character,” he says. “That way, no matter what happens during the filming, they know the relationship and are able to hold on to it. We would improvise to get ourselves into a scene. Sometimes I wouldn’t even yell ‘Action!’, because we would go into the scene so seamlessly that you couldn’t tell where the improv stopped and the scene began.”

The process brought home to the four young actors just how closely parts of Attraction paralleled their own lives. “I remember a Saturday night around a table at Robin Schorr’s house, where we all admitted we had done the ‘drive-by’, looking in the window, peeking around, seeing shadows,” recalls Mathis. “The phone calls, the hang ups… everyone had a story to tell.”

Principal photography on Attraction began on 15 November 1999. It was, admits DeGrazier, an intensive experience - they had to shoot two big scenes a day to stay on schedule. But it also began to affect DeGrazier all over again.

“I’ve admitted a lot to myself about how I’ve had relationships before,” he jokes, “and now I’m hesitant. I’m in a definite ‘pause’ mode in the relationship area right now!”