A BUNCH OF STUFF

“My husband is in Jamaica with a 19-year-old. A friend of my daughter’s. And he had the fucking nerve to ask me to sell his singles collection and send him a check for whatever I got, minus a 10% commission. Which reminds me, would you make sure to give me a $5? I want to frame it. Put it on the wall.”

Deleted scene. When I used to watch the VHS of this over and over growing up all the deleted scenes played after the credits. I’d listen to the Stevie Wonder song, the Love song, then the Howard Shore score, then these would pop up. Since jumping ship to DVD (and then to an mp4 when the DVD broke) I haven’t had a chance to see these in a while. But this was always one of my favorite parts of the movie and book. It’s a shame they had to leave it out. 

The riskiest choice the filmmakers made was casting a Danish newcomer, Iben Hjejle, as Laura. ”We had been reading a lot of actresses,” Mr. Cusack says, ”and we had no consensus about choice. And then Stephen went to a film festival in Berlin where he saw ‘Mifune,’ in which Iben is just wonderful, and she was there getting an award. And he called me in the middle of the night, screaming: ‘I’ve found her! I’ve found Laura!’ I said, ‘Where are you?’ He says, ‘In Germany!’ I say, ‘Laura’s German?’ He says, ‘No, from Denmark.’ That’s when I asked him if he was drunk.”

Mr. Frears says: ”But the truth is that this is a story about a man obsessed with a woman. Well, this has to be something everyone understands. You have to have someone who fulfills that requirement. Well, that’s an incredible thing to hang on someone; no woman in life is like that. But on that cold night in February in Berlin, Iben was.”

“And she liked me. She liked me. She liked me. She liked me. Or at least, I think she did. I think she did. Etc.”