In “For a Good Time Call …,” Ari Graynor plays one half of an odd-couple roommate pair (with co-writer Lauren Anne Miller as the more conservative half) who end up best friends and co-owners of a successful phone sex operation. The film gave Graynor plenty of opportunities to show off her comedy chops.
This may sound weird, but this movie really reminded me of “Beaches.”
Oh my God, it’s so funny. We have a joke that if the movie does well, we want to do a Funny or Die video with Barbara Hershey and Bette Midler called “C-m to the Beaches.” I feel like they would do it. I’m starting a Twitter campaign to get Bette to come to our premiere. But yeah, it’s basically the same movie, at the end of the day.
It seems in today’s Hollywood it’s harder to get those kinds of female-fronted comedies made.
There was a dynamic of strength and vulnerability in all those women that I just loved so much — and a freedom in their performances that I just think was so special. Certainly that kind of talent is still around — there just hasn’t been the forum to let it loose in the same way. I don’t know why that got lost. It’s confusing, but it’s nice to feel like maybe it’s coming back. I feel like there’s this really exciting moment right now — specifically with women — of taking charge of their careers, of taking charge of content. There are all these women that are making it happen for themselves. Some people might say it’s unrealistic to get [“For a Good Time Call”] made, to get it made in 16 days, to find financing, to get into Sundance, but here we are and it’s been such a complete success story. You never know, and you just have to push through.
How important was it for this story to take place in New York?
Well, we shot it in L.A., with one day of shooting in New York. It was so important to the story that it be set in New York. The economical reality of this story of why two people that hate each other would be forced to live together and that sense of real estate only really happens in New York. It’s not the same in L.A.
It seems surprising that phone sex lines still exist.
Phone sex absolutely still exists. I think the truth is, even with the Internet, there’s a different kind of anonymity with phone sex than with Web cams and all that stuff — God knows who can record what on those things. And, I think more to the point, people like a little intimacy. We’re in this culture of porn, but people, I believe, still want intimacy, and I think some people are afraid of it in real life or don’t know how to access it in real life.
