'She plays a boxer who gets paralysed, a boy/girl who gets raped and murdered and she does a romance and almost gets blinded...'
PS I Love You star Hilary Swank and director Richard LaGravanese were in London to discuss romance, death and just how dangerous a pair of co-star braces can be. Screenjabber was there, busilly taking notes...
PS I Love You is about love and death and is thus the sort of film that everyone will have a personal reaction to. What were your reactions when you read the novel and/or the screenplay?
Richard LaGravanese: I had a friend, Ted Demme, and I went through a similar experience after he'd died of feeling him around and dreaming about him and him guiding me, because we'd been working on a documentary when he died. I saw the book as a way of putting that story in there. There are a lot of little things of Teddy I put in there that only people who knew Teddy would recognise. The urn, for example, is designed after his urn.
Hilary Swank: For me, reading the scripot, I was just reminded of what life was about. You hold those ones that you love dear because you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. It's a great love story, we can all relate to that, finding love, losing love: even a break up can sometimes feel like a death. There were many things I could relate to and with a lot of laughter in between.
You two obviously get on as you also made Freedom Wirters together. How did this second chance to work together come about?
RL: Freedom Writers took six years to get made and the reason it did get made was Hilary. Inbetween that period, I gave up at some point and got offered PS I Love You, so I wrote that and then Hilary called and said I'll do Freedom Wiriters, right before Million Dollar Baby, and that made the project happen. While we were doing Freedom Writers, Hilary said to me she'd read another script of mine and liked it —
HS: I loved it, those were my exact words: loved it!
RL: — but I'd given it up. Then one of our producers, Molly Smith, her elder sister had passed away, two weeks later she read PS I Love You, and wanted to make it for her sister, not knowing a script had been written. She revived it at the finish of Freedom Writers and we got the opportunity to make it.
When you're working with a director you've already worked with, does the relationship develop further?
HS: Anytime you spend a lot of time with someone it evolves and deepens, and in our relationship it deepened for the better. Richard's one of my favourite screenwriters and is proving to be a quite extraordinary director as well. From Fredom Writers, the prgoression into this was natural. I feel like we have a shorthand, I love collaborating with Richard. On the set of Freedom Writers he was always talking about how I was a goof ball, this girly girl, and how he wanted to show that side of me so here we are, showing that side of me!
We've read some three different versions of your on-set accident, Hilary. Could you set the record straight?
HS: Of course! I love the fact that there are three stories going around... What happened, during the great striptease [by Gerard Butler], during the off camera version, he took a suspender clip and he flicks it — you wouldn't believe it if it happened in a movie, by the way — and it catches on the TV stand. He jumps on the bed and this suspender is now stretched about ten feet —
RL: lt's like a slingshot
HS: — and then this piece of furniture starts walking, and then flies across the room and hits me right in the forehead. I was laughing and crying at the same time, and I was sitting there with everyone around me. I ended up needing stitches, and I had this perfect suspender clip mark in my forehead, with the teeth. The plastic surgeon was asking 'what bit you?'!
RL: She plays a boxer who gets paralysed, a boy/girl who gets raped and murdered and she does a romance in New York and almost gets blinded... I felt so responsible. Gerry felt so bad, he turned into a nine year old boy who's done the wrong thing and is really upset about it.
How did it compare to the worst Million Dollar Baby injury?
HS: My face went virtually unscathed during Million Dollar Baby. Like he said, romantic comedy, I get stitches...
Gerry gets a few shoes thrown at him during that scene. Was that intentional? Was it penance?
HS: No, we did that before. He was so sweet, he sent me chocolates and flowers, he heard I like waffles and sent me a wafflemaker...
How did you come to cast Gerard Butler?
RL: I met him before 300, in September, and that came out in March. We shot October to March. I had seen him in Dear Frankie, and within five minutes of meeting Gerry I knew he WAS [our character] Gerry. He's this hulking, masculine Spartan but he's also this Peter Pan-ish mischevious little boy. It's a perfect combination.
Isn't it perverse to have Harry Connick in a film and then give Gerard Butler three songs?
RL: I was embarrassed to ask him! I didn't want him to think I'd given him the part because I wanted him to sing, so I never asked him. But the last day of his shooting he sat down at the piano and did a half hour concert.
HS: My character had a piano in her apartment, and while sitting in there, he just started playing to just Richard and Me. Then you turn around and there are more people and by the end of it, the entire crew was there and he kept playing and playing. It was amazing.