By: debbie lynn elias
Magic is the operative word with Fox Searchlight’s RUBY SPARKS. Written by the singularly unique voice of actress-screenwriter Zoe Kazan, and directed by the award winning couple of Little Miss Sunshine, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, RUBY SPARKS is filled with charm, intelligence, wit, love and laughter. Drawing on her own love of literature, Kazan weaves a spell that calls on elements of Greek mythology with touches of Galatea and Pygmalian, plus a little bit of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, celebrating the written word and the imagination of a writer.
Starring real-life couple Kazan and Paul Dano as RUBY SPARKS and best-selling author Calvin Weir-Fields, we first meet Calvin who is crippled by a severe case of writer’s block. Undergoing intensive psychotherapy in an effort to get his creative juices (and empty heart) flowing again, Calvin’s therapist gives him a unique assignment – write a paragraph about the perfect woman who would love your imperfect little dog. Rushing home, Calvin immediately starts clacking away on the keys of his beloved manual typewriter and blank pages begin to take shape. But as his paragraph turns into pages and pages, strange things begin to happen. Lacy undies pop up in drawers and between sofa cushions and pink razors appear in the bathroom. And then, RUBY SPARKS herself appears. Is it a dream? Is he insane? No. Ruby is real. She is everything that Calvin has dreamt of, everything he has written – word for word. And she’s not disappearing. As Calvin embraces this miracle, Ruby starts turning Calvin’s once monochromatic lonely life upside down. But what happens when the world itself starts tweaking his “product”, giving Ruby traits and responses that Calvin doesn’t like? Will he try and play God to maintain full control over his creation or will he destroy the very thing that brought him to life?
Kazan and Dano ooze charm and sweetness at every turn, even during some very emotionally challenging scenes. They are a joy to watch. A real treat is seeing Dano flex his comedic chops with befuddled sincerity a la Jimmy Stewart. Making a conscious effort to not have Calvin and Dano be the same person and bearing in mind that Dano “never, never tries to make his characters the same as who he is”, Kazan is thoughtful in noting the presence of Dano’s “sweetness and soulfulness in Calvin” but, she also sees ” Paul’s humor up there on screen in the playing of Calvin.”
As RUBY SPARKS, Kazan soars, bubbling with effervesence like a fine champagne. “For me, I feel like Ruby gets more complicated for me as the movie goes on. All those things that get drawn out of her by Calvin changing her, are all just different parts of her personality to start with. It’s just that when you put stress on one thing, other things start to disappear. I guess I was interested in what happens when people try to manipulate each other; that you sort of destroy the thing that you love by trying to change it.” According to Dano, on reading the script, “I think there was more of Zoe in Ruby than when we actually went to do it and I think she found who Ruby was when going to act the part and I saw the separation occur. . .[W]hen I watch the film I see the character, which is really nice.”
A real winner is Chris Messina who, as Calvin’s brother Harry, just soars with heartfelt genuine laughter. Described by Faris as being “funny, but he’s so real and he’s got such warmth”, Messina plays the devil’s advocate and being the skeptic to Calvin’s belief in this literary Galatea, Messina not only grounds the films with an endearing disbelief but serves as the connective tissue to the audience. First drawn to the project and role thanks to Kazan’s writing, it was then the couples power of the film – Dano & Kazan and Dayton & Faris – that got him hooked. When told of RUBY SPARKS the possibility of playing Dano’s brother, Messina’s first thought was, “I don’t look anything like Paul” but then “I read it and I was blown away it. Then I wanted in.”
Annette Bening and Antonio Banderas easily step in as Calvin’s parents. The complete antithesis of Calvin, they are the embodiment of the 60’s flower power generation filled with life, color, energy and love. (And they even get to have their movie home in the fantastical house that once belonged to Sid Kroft.) Never have we seen Banderas like this and it’s fun, while Bening harkens to her character in “Mars Attacks!” As for Banderas, “I just want to do things I love and I believe in.” As director Jonathan Dayton tells it, “[W]hen we met with Antonio, we realized he is Mort. He is this guy. And he was clearly interested in this character. He kept saying ‘What do you think? What if he had a tattoo? He had all these ideas for the character. . .You could tell he was really eager to run with something that felt different for him.” Key to creating this parental unit for Calvin and Harry is Banderas’ undeniable chemistry with Bening
And then we are treated to Elliot Gould. As Calvin’s psychiatrist, warmth and generosity of spirit are the first words that come to mind watching him. A funny and unexpected joy comes courtesy of Steve Coogan as egomaniacal womanizing literary blowhard Langdon Tharp. Coogan just oozes deliciousness like a dark comedic oil slick.
Although having written two successfully produced plays prior to RUBY SPARKS, a screenplay was new territory for her. Inspired by seeing a mannequin in a trash pile, Kazan’s mind instantly recalled her Greek mythology and the myth of Galatea, an ivory statue crafted by Pygmalian, malleable and animated thanks to Pygmalian’s love. Taking the fantasy of the myth and applying it to the present day and the printed word, “I started writing it feeling very like, the story suddenly was crystal clear to me and the people were crystal clear to me.” Although when she began writing she found herself writing Ruby and Calvin for herself and Dano, “I really put that out of my head completely while I was writing because I was so much more excited about what was happening inside my brain than trying to orchestrate some fantastic scene for us to play.” The results are charming, creative, engaging and intelligent providing an entertaining and often amusing take on egomaniacal male absorption and obsession, laced with tinges of defiant dark neurosis.
According to director Valerie Faris, “[Kazan] has a real gift for making things look very easy. They look simple on the surface but there’s a lot embedded in the story. There’s an economy to her writing that I love. It moves really quickly without just staying on the surface. That’s a really hard thing to do and she can write funny. That’s not easy. Comedy writing is the hardest and yet there’s so much that’s relatable in it.” Also key to the fluidity of the film is that Kazan is “not so precious in her work” and is open to change and collaboration to attain the right balance and effect.
Luck was with executive producer Dano and Kazan when Dayton and Faris came on board. As opined by Dano, who worked with Dayton and Faris on Little Miss Sunshine, “They are wonderful people and I think they are wonderful filmmakers. I think they really care about what they do and I think you feel the love in their films. I think they love what they do and care about the characters and the story and the audience. We thought of them about 10 pages into Zoe writing. I had no clue where the story was going. It was clear that for some reason they would be the dream choice if we could have anybody.” The perfect directors for RUBY SPARKS, they know to exact “the tone of having something be really funny and magical and fun, but also have some depth and be grounded and explore something and not be afraid to find a dark moment.”
For Dayton, “What was great about doing this was that the layers just kept unfolding. And then, also, as a director, as a filmmaker, the challenge of what is the score for something like this. ..There were so many challenges. The film goes to darker places that you don’t normally have in a romantic comedy. I don’t even want to call it that. This isn’t a romantic comedy.” Walking a tightrope and going into areas they hadn’t previously explored as filmmakers, Faris notes that RUBY SPARKS “went to a very interesting and challenging place”, becoming a comedy with “plenty of very funny bits” but also one filled with “drama and that mix of pain, suffering and humor is just the way we experience life and like to see it in the movies.”
Messina has nothing but praise for this dynamite directing duo. “Those guys are incredible. What they do, and is very rare for me, is they rehearse but they don’t rehearse….normally in films, in my experience, you rehearse so on the day you can move quicker; that you can troubleshoot. You can ask a lot of questions and slow down the process. They don’t rehearse for that. They rehearse – and they had everybody do this, Annette [Bening] did it, Zoe [Kazan], Paul [Dano] – we would take off our shoes and we’d come into a room and we’d run around the room. They gave us journals and we’d write in the journals. They’d ask a bunch of questions. Then 20, 30 minutes later, we’d read our entries to each other. We played darts and we listened to music and we ate food together and we improvised. And by the end of that, no matter what Paul and I look like, we were brothers. It was like putting together a theater troupe. I think their films have that.”
Celebrating Los Angeles, and their own love story, Dayton and Faris, center the film in the Los Feliz area and their own old stomping grounds so as to include a “lived in” and “grounded” reality – El Coyote, Hollywood Cemetery, the local cafes and Vermont Avenue – all places that someone like Calvin, living in that neighborhood, would frequent.
Calling on the talents of Oscar winning cinematographer Matthew Libatique, Dayton was particularly excited by his use of the new Alexa digital camera that allowed them “to film in Calvin’s house and look out the window and see the city lights without any enhancement.” And, of course, with Libatique, creativity and technology know no bounds which led to “certain scenes when [Calvin] was sleeping at night where we would light him with an iPad. We just had an iPad hanging above his bed and then all the city lights balanced perfectly and we could capture the city in a more naturalistic way.” The visuals are not only clean and crisp, but richly lensed, capturing the stark coldness of Calvin’s steel and white monochromatic bland world set against the warm colorful hues of the neighborhood, the bold bright sparkle of Ruby and particularly, the world of Calvin’s parents. Libatique’s work goes far in furthering and celebrating the performances and Kazan’s unique voice.
Paying attention to every detail, Dayton and Faris assembled a team as dedicated to mastering every element of production necessary to achieve the desired result, from “the production design, the color of her stockings, every item of furniture, every Post-it note on the wall, what that Post-it note says, which typewriter.”
A big challenge for music video veteran Dayton was the film’s score. Knowing “we didn’t want to do a conventional ‘indie rock band lyrics telling you what to feel’ kind of score” he called on the talents of Nick Urata who played musical Pygmalian, crafting the perfect blend of classical works with some new “freeing” and often frenetic arpeggio-heavy pieces for a fresh, complementary result.
Watch the sparks fly with a new timeless classic, RUBY SPARKS.
Ruby Sparks – Zoe Kazan
Calvin Weir-Fields – Paul Dano
Harry – Chris Messina
Mort – Antonio Banderas
Gertrude – Annette Bening
Dr. Rosenthal – Elliot Gould
Langdon Tharp – Steve Coogan
Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. Written by Zoe Kazan.
