Leslye Headland, the writer-director of the Jason Sudeikis and Alison Brie film that just premiered at Sundance, discusses the state of the rom-com, the “misogyny” of Woody Allen, and how she wrote an uplifting movie while depressed.
Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis in Sleeping With Other People.
Linda Kallerus
PARK CITY, Utah — Screenwriter, director, and playwright Leslye Headland killed it at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012 with her profane, outrageous movie Bachelorette, which went on to be an important step in the VOD revolution.
This year, Sleeping With Other People, her second feature as a director, also made its debut at Sundance. And when Headland sat down with BuzzFeed News two days after its premiere to talk about the film, she was feeling "amazing." The day before had been a different story. "I felt like a disaster. Oh my god," she said. "As a filmmaker, you just pour your heart and soul into something. And then suddenly, it's gone."
Sleeping With Other People tells the story of Jake (Jason Sudeikis) and Lainey (Alison Brie), who share a meet un-cute during college, lose their virginities to one another, and don't see each other for years. When they reunite in their early thirties, Lainey is essentially stalking Matthew (Adam Scott), a cold, engaged OB-GYN with whom she has occasional sex. And Jake now occupies the hazy space between toxic bachelor and sex addict. They decide not to sleep with each other, and instead become best friends — the sort of friends who text late at night, divulge secrets, take Ecstasy together, and, in one particularly memorable scene, share masturbatory strategy using a water bottle and the coinage "dirty DJ" in reference to a clitoral stimulation technique. Yes, they are in love, but it takes them time and growth to get there.
During an interview in Park City, Headland talked about how no studio wanted to make Sleeping With Other People, the state of the romantic comedy and why we need them, her post-Bachelorette crash, and why she feels Woody Allen is her "film dad that I've been let down by." She is a fast-talker, and a prolific one, and by the end, publicists were standing over us to try to keep her on time. (Note: It did not stop her.)
Leslye Headland, Alison Brie, and Jason Sudeikis at the Sundance Film Festival.
Larry Busacca / Getty Images
Sleeping With Other People is very different from Bachelorette. Did you deliberately shift gears as a writer?
Leslye Headland: Bachelorette came out, and I went into this, like, horrific depression. I was really depressed. Like, I couldn't leave my house, I would say, for at least a month. I was really only going to the deli and coming back, and ordering food, talking to only a few people. I just couldn't get out of bed. It was really scary, actually. And I'm not quite sure why. The response was great. They were like, "You've made history! Everybody loves it!" I don't know — something happened. I had this awful romantic stuff happening in my life a little bit after that.
I went away probably six to eight months after the movie came out on iTunes and made this big splash or whatever. I knew I wanted to write something for Jason, and I sort of had the vague idea of a platonic relationship between two people that were seriously damaged. And so I went to Big Sur, and I wrote the script. And I was absolutely shocked that it was a romantic comedy.
As you were writing it, you were surprised?
LH: As I was writing it, I was like, this is a romantic comedy! I think it was so odd that I was in such a dark place and such a positive movie came out of it. I think it was because I was so desperate for love. I had my heart broken so irreparably. Like, I will never be the same after this breakup that I had. It's too convoluted and stupid to get into.
Feel free to get into it.
LH: A lot of it's in the movie. It's all in the movie, I think, looking back on it. But once I realized that it was a romantic comedy, and I was reading all about how the genre was dead, and blah blah blah, I was like, I think I really need this. I think people really need this. I think we need to say it's still out there, man. Even if you're fuckin' a guy that's engaged, even if you fucked up every single relationship you've ever had, you still need love. And you actually deserve it.
A movie we talked about a lot when we made this was The Apartment, which is, like, my favorite movie of all time. And this is basically the same movie. People say, "It's a lot like When Harry Met Sally..." I'm like, "It's also a lot like The Apartment." When people say, "She's having sex with an engaged man?" I'm like, "In 1960, Shirley MacLaine was fuckin' a married dude. It's 2015. Let's all just acknowledge the fact that this stuff happens."
I think I created the story because I needed love in my life. And I was going to create characters to have it, because I didn't have it in my own life.
Did it work?
LH: It did work, actually. I feel so much better now. I'm dating again. I've gained back some weight, which is really nice — I wasn't eating, I wasn't sleeping. I was totally a mess. I wrote a love story because I was like, I'm not sure I believe love exists anymore. And if I can write this story, and if I can get everyone to buy it, that these two people fall in love with each other — people, not characters — if I can make them as real as humanly possible, if I give this out to the world, then I might feel some of it for myself.
People don't have to like it for me to feel the love. You can not like it; you can like it. Same thing with Bachelorette — some people were like, "This is garbage"; some people were like, "It's my favorite movie." It's fine. It's that if I send that vulnerability out there, then I get so much back from the universe. In so many different forms.
Going back to When Harry Met Sally..., which is an obvious comparison, that movie was as mainstream as it gets. Rob Reiner directed it, Nora Ephron wrote it, and Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal — huge stars — were in it. And here we are at Sundance, in the independent market, with your movie.
LH: What's funny is that I couldn't make that movie at a studio. Like, I tried to. They didn't want to. There are very explicit sex scenes in it. They would never allow that bottle scene in a studio movie. The Adam Scott character, they would say we have to get rid of him completely — he's too creepy, it's too weird. I don't understand. Why is she having sex with him? We need to make sure that she's sitting around, completely asexual, and just waiting for the right guy. I actually really love Silver Linings Playbook, and that was made independently as well. But still, even the way they treat that female character, her sexual dysfunction is going to be solved by the right guy. Which, in my film, I don't think is the moral. Her dysfunction and the pain that she's in is solved by her learning to love herself. And he teaches her how to do it, quite literally, with the bottle scene. I think the film is probably a lot more subversive than it is at first glance. People were like, why does she have sex with that guy? It's like, is she just going to wait around for Jake to get his shit together? What's funny about the film is that a lot of it was subtler things, like the fact that we don't slut-shame her. And the fact that we don't glorify Jake's behavior.
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