Interview (Part 2): Tess Morris (“Man Up”)

Tess Morris wrote the screenplay for the movie Man Up, a romantic comedy starring Lake Bell and Simon Pegg, directed by Ben Palmer. Generating strong reviews, the movie opens this weekend in the United Kingdom, and has been picked up for distribution in North America by Saban Films.

I recently had a wonderful conversation with Tess in which we covered a lot of territory. I will be rolling out that interview in several installments this week.

Today in Part 2, Tess talks about her lengthy road to becoming an “overnight success” and some of the inspiration for her movie Man Up:

Scott: Let’s jump to 2011 when your screenplay, the romantic comedy Man Up makes the Brit List. It gets picked up by Big Talk Pictures. Now it’s produced by Studio Canal and BBC Films. It’s set to be released in May of this year, so it’s safe to say you’re one of those overnight success stories.

[laughter]

Tess: I always say it took me 15 years to have overnight success. Because it’s a long game. I mean, it took another 10 years after Beer Goggles to actually understand even how to be a writer. I worked mainly in television after that and wrote lots of sitcom and soap opera and things.

And Man Up was very much a last‑chance saloon script for me. I wrote it on spec in the beginning of 2011. I faffed around for quite a long time. I’d earned a living but not a regular‑enough living. I’d been in development a lot. I had lots of things optioned TV‑wise that had never ended up being made.

I was in my early 30s and had a bit of a life change and was just thinking, “What am I doing? Is being a writer good for me anymore?’ And then I actually took two years off and worked in film development, where I read lots of scripts. I was a script reader for the BFI, which is a film council over here, and Film Four.

And I read so many film scripts and realized I should try and just write one. And I had always known that I wanted to write romantic comedy, but didn’t really know how to go about it at that point.

I’d read lots of books. There are so many books, aren’t there? All of them had some merit. Some of them had 10 percent you could use… But then I read a book called “Writing the Romantic Comedy.”

Scott: Billy Mernit.

Tess: Yeah. Billy Mernit, who I subsequently stalked and he is now my friend, which has been very rewarding [laughs]. I read his book, my writing life changed, I wrote Man Up. As you’ve read the script, it’s not a spoiler to say it’s based on pretending to be someone’s blind date, based on something that happened to me. I was under the clock at Waterloo Station, and a guy came over and said, “Are you Claire?” And I said, “No, I’m not Claire.”

Then, as he walked off, I thought, that’s a really good idea for a romantic comedy set up. So I had the idea, but I didn’t really know how to put it into an hour and a half format, or 88 minutes, which we actually came in at. I had really only written half hour sort of things, and it’s such a different way of writing, I mean, it’s totally different.

I read Billy Mernit’s book, and it just unlocked the whole rom com structure, and world, for me.

And then I took three months and just wrote it. I had just come out of quite a sad break up and was in a sort of slightly, it’s now or never mode, writing wise. I said to myself, I’m going to write this script, and if it doesn’t work, then I’ll go and get a proper job. I didn’t know what I meant by that at all, though.

So I wrote it, and then, yeah, as you say, it was sort of quick, but it’s only quick in terms of the actual process from 2011, really! Everything up until then was a slog and a learning curve of epic proportions.

Scott: Let’s talk about Man Up, starring Lake Bell and Simon Pegg, directed by Ben Palmer. Here’s the plot summary from IMBd:

“A single woman who’s mistaken for a stranger’s blind date, leads to her finding the perfect boyfriend.”

There’s a long history in Hollywood movies featuring mistaken identity as a central narrative device. There’s thrillers, like Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man and North by Northwest. There’s comedies like The Life of Brian and Galaxy Quest.

When you talked about that guy walked up to you and said, “Are you so and so?” You said, “No, I’m not Clare,” and he walked away and you thought, that’s an interesting idea. As you played around with it in developing the story, what appealed to you about the mistaken identity conceit as a writer?

Tess: Well, it’s funny, because actually it went through quite a few different versions. When I first had the idea, I thought, OK, that’s a neat set up. Then I over complicated it in earlier outlines, I had a version where actually she’d been to school with him and he’d dumped her and treated her like shit. Then he didn’t recognize her, 15, 20 years later. So her going on the date was also out of revenge…

But I was just over complicating it all. The important thing in the film, and when you see it, hopefully, you’ll like this part of it, is that Nancy’s reasons for going on the date are grounded in real human emotion, and you really buy why she says “Yeah, fuck it, I am your blind date” Revenge made it seem too pointed, too arch.

Scott: Right.

Tess: I spent quite a long time trying to create a character in Nancy that is so disillusioned with the dating world, which I really was, and continue to be. It’s that feeling of, I really don’t want to go on another set up. I really don’t want to meet someone that I know everything about upfront, because it takes away any romance and any mystery.

And what I liked about this set up was that here were two people who really didn’t know anything about each other. I found that a really interesting kind of premise. She’s pretending to be someone that she’s not, although also, I didn’t want to sustain it for the whole film, because I didn’t want it to just be about that.

For example in While You Were Sleeping, she maintains it for the whole of the film, and it does actually work very well, but I think it can also get a bit tiring in other films, where you’re like, “OK, come on. Enough!” I also wanted to have a lot of fun with the idea of when he finds out, which I think is on page, 35 or 38, whatever, structurally, so that it turns itself on its head again.

Also, in the modern world, how do you write a film now where two people go on a date and don’t actually know anything about each other? It’s impossible! You’ve got Google. You can just be told someone’s name, and job, and if you’re a good Internet detective, like me, you can find out anything about them. [laughs]

Scott: There’s a lot that you covered there that I want to unpack there. For example, you mentioned you were personally disillusioned with that whole dating scene. When we meet Nancy, you get a strong feeling, right from the get-go that she’s just about given up the possibility of ever meeting the right guy.

That strikes me as being something that would connect with a pretty significant target audience. I’m assuming there’s a lot of people out there who have either experienced that sort of hopelessness of the whole dating scene, or are in the midst of that.

So how much of that was you putting on your producer’s hat going, “Oh, well there’s a big target audience,” and how much of that was just more personally driven?

Tess: So personally driven. [laughs]

Scott: Yeah?

Tess: Yeah. Someone was actually asking me the other day, when you wrote it, were you thinking about who this would appeal to? I said, “I never thought it would ever get made, so I wasn’t even thinking that at that point.”

Obviously, I was dreaming it would, but I never actually believed that it would. I wrote Man Up when I was 33 or 34. I’m 38 now, and I think that there is a very interesting thing that’s happened to women, and men, who haven’t gone the route that others have gone. If you’re not married with children by now… well, we’re quite a different kind of species and there’s actually quite a lot of us out there.

That’s also not to say that I think that Nancy can’t also appeal to people generally who are having a bit of a crisis, whether you’re married or not, or coupled up, or whatever. Everyone goes through points in their relationship where they lose a bit of hope. Really, that’s what I think she is. She’s kind of over the top about giving up, but what she has lost is her hope about love and life and happiness.

Scott: Actually, I think that Jessica, the woman she meets on the train says a line about that. “Life without hope is death,” right?

Tess: [laughs] Life without hope… Ophelia Lovibond, who plays Jessica, totally nailed that line. Yeah. That’s really very much what I was feeling. Actually, I don’t feel that now, though. Weirdly, now that I’m a bit older, I’ve got the reverse of that. I am more, this is where you’re at in life, deal with it.

Whereas, back then, I was so acutely aware of everyone around me having babies and all the men that I met who were in their late 30s, 40s ending up with younger women. It was just so cliche and typical.

But the flip side is that Jessica, who she meets on the train, is actually not the ‘younger girl baddie’ at all. Because she ends up having her nice little moment towards the end, without spoiling it.

The title Man Up is also about both Jack and Nancy doing just that. And various other characters, too. But Jack and Nancy, they both have to take a bit of a chance and I think sometimes you have to do that in life. Because otherwise it is death [laughs].

Tomorrow in Part 3, Tess digs deeper into some creative choices she made when scripting Man Up.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

For GITS readers in the U.K. who want to see more original movies, especially those of you waiting for an increase in romantic comedies, although I have yet to see it, I can tell you from reading the script, Man Up is an excellent story — funny, touching, human, and surprising — and by all accounts really great entertainment.

In other words, go support Man Up in theaters this weekend!

Tess is repped by WME and Julia Tyrrell Management.

Twitter: @TheTessMorris.