Interview [Part 3]: Geoff LaTulippe

One of the more active and colorful voices in the online screenwriting community is Geoff LaTulippe. Writer of the 2010 romantic comedy Going the Distance, starring Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, Geoff also has a blog, is co-host (along with Scott Beggs) of the popular Broken Projector podcast, and is quite active on Twitter (@DrGMLaTulippe).

Geoff and I had a wide-ranging back and forth via email about his background, the development and production of Going the Distance, and the craft of screenwriting.

Today in Part 3, Geoff talks about the two lead characters in Going the Distance, Garrett and Erin, and how they came to be played by Justin Long and Drew Barrymore:

Scott: Let’s talk about some of the key characters in the movie. First, there’s Garrett played by Justin Long. If I asked you to describe his character, what would you say?

Geoff: Honestly? He was just a version of me and Dave at the time. Manchildren slowly coming to terms with the notion of real world responsibility and flagging immaturity. I think I imbued on Garrett, though, a good heart at the center of it all; the existence of my good heart is still a hotly debated topic. But I think he was a reflection of where I and so many of my friends were at the time: too old to be a kid anymore, too young to really have grown up yet. I was 28 when I sold the script, and Garrett was originally written as a 25 year-old. He just felt like a guy who was in the same place as me — waiting to find his path, figuring out romantic entanglements as part of the course.

Scott: Garrett is a huge fan of the movie Top Gun. In fact there’s kind of a runner with that movie’s song “Take My Breath Away.” First off, did you include that song in your original script? I mean we all know about the supposed rule not to include specific songs, but it says something about Garrett’s character: He’s a romantic.

Geoff: The TOP GUN stuff was always in there, and as we developed it, we came up with the idea to have his roommate Dan DJ his hookup with Erin; I believe that song was always part of it. And yeah, even though it’s not Garrett putting on the music, the way he plays it off is pure MODERN romance in my eyes. The reason he hangs onto things like a then-25 year-old movie is because he’s sentimental, as am I. One thing that’s always stuck with me from one of my favorite movies, HIGH FIDELITY, is that notion of, “It’s what you like, not what you ARE like.” I think that’s true to a huge degree. And there’s something fun and sort of adorable about bonding over a homoerotic fighter pilot movie.

Incidentally, in the morning, Dan is still DJing the hookup, this time with “I’ve Had the Time of My Life”. That wasn’t originally in the script, but one day it just popped into Exec Producer Michael Disco’s head. It was a brilliant bookend that I wish I could take credit for.

Scott: This idea of Garrett as romantic is underscored when he says point blank, “The only way you can be happy in life is to marry your best friend.” That’s an admirable goal, but on the other hand Garrett’s friends critique him that he’s never really allowed himself to be close to any girl he’s dated up to this point in his life. Do you think that’s in part because he has set the bar so high: he’s got to find a best friend first before he can open himself up like that?

Geoff: That scene was actually ad-libbed by Drew and Justin, and it’s one of my favorite parts of the movie. I’ve met a lot of writers who get really upset that their scripts have been “tainted” by actors going off the literal words written for them, but I wear it as a badge of honor. I wrote something that they dug deep into and found something in. I find that incredibly gratifying. Maybe I’m just conceited.

In any event, I don’t think it’s that specific for Garrett. I think, much like my writing, love is a gut instinct that you have — it’s either there, or it isn’t, and it works or it doesn’t. And until Erin came along, he probably never truly felt “it” before. In the middle of writing this script I thought I’d had my heart broken big time; as it turned out, the relationship I was in was toxic and holographic, and as I adjusted I realized I was better off free of it. A lot of that is there in the script, oddly enough. Because when the script sold and I was making my rounds with studios and production companies for generals, I remember very clearly a female producer saying to me, “So you wrote the girl YOU wanted to find, right?” And I realized, holy shit, that’s EXACTLY what I had done. And so, not to get too metaphysical here, but that’s what I did for Garrett — I drew up a dynamic and wonderfully flawed girl in Erin that would cement that gut feeling for him that he’d never quite found and perhaps never even knew he was looking for.

So maybe he WAS looking for a best friend? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand I think I’ll just stop giving myself theoretical handjobs now.

Scott: But Garrett does meet a woman who becomes his best friend: Erin played by Drew Barrymore. When we meet her, she’s an intern at a New York newspaper, but she’s in her early 30s which is unusual. Her backstory: She ran off with some guy after high school for several years, giving her a delayed start on life. So my first question regarding Erin: Did you always have that background for her character or is that something you did to adjust to Drew Barrymore taking on the role?

Geoff: Unbeknownst to me, when we attached Justin to the script, he was dating Drew. He gave the script to her, and she, in another ABSURDLY lucky turn (my life seems to be built on those), kind of flipped for it. Since Drew is the kind of actor that gets you a greenlight, we immediately began adjusting the character to her. Originally, Erin had been, I think, 23. Fresh out of college and in her first year of teaching at a middle school. Eventually, it evolved into the character that showed up in the movie. And thank God it did, because that character and her story were infinitely more interesting at the end of the day.

Scott: How did you go about developing Erin’s character? Were you making choices in response to what Garrett would need in terms of a best friend or did she evolve as her own type of character, or perhaps you developed both she and Garrett simultaneously?

Geoff: We had the good fortune to have Nanette Burstein, a very strong female director, come into the fold pretty early on in the process — before anyone was even cast, I recall. And she was one of the first to say, “This is going to work much better as a two-hander instead of predominantly from Garrett’s point of view.” And she was right. And once we clicked onto that, it became…it was never easy, but much smoother to develop the characters against each other and the situation they’d put themselves in. And I think that was always the focus — we need to shine a light on the universality of the situation and just what it is about a long-distance relationship that’s so challenging. And, ultimately, why so many people go through it knowing, on some level, that it’s almost certainly a doomed proposition.

Eventually, Justin and Drew came on, and they were (or had been) in an ACTUAL relationship, and so we further developed based on their experiences and their personal connection. It was a fascinating thing to be part of, because it always felt very, very real.

Scott: You set yourself up with a big challenge in the first act of the story. First, you needed to show Garrett getting dumped by a girlfriend, meeting Erin, hitting it off, setting the timetable — Erin will be leaving to go back to college in 6 weeks — then somehow creating a credible sense that they actually fall for each other, all of that in the first 30 minutes. But you pulled it off. Did that lay out pretty easily for you or did you have to work and rework Act One to get all of those dynamics in place?

Geoff: We did a TON of work on Act I. A ton. But what’s really funny is this: at the end of the day, that ticking clock provided a sense of urgency, and that was what really propelled the relationship forward and likely stoked feelings that would have taken more time to light a fire under in a “normal” circumstance. One of the questions I STILL ask myself when watching the movie is, “Are they REALLY in love, or are their feelings simply inflated by the circumstances?” Maybe it’s a little of both. I think that’s a good thing.

So what it came down to was this: we had two people who were getting split apart, but that wasn’t something either of them wanted — it was simply unavoidable. I thought it was crucial to have them communicate this. And so we actually started from a place where the characters were saying, “I know this isn’t ideal, but there’s too much here to let it go just because we don’t live in the same place.” And I think it’s that detail, that take on their relationship, that allows it to essentially continue to be explored throughout Act II. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I think Erin and Garrett are the quintessential embodiment of that.

Tomorrow in Part 4, Geoff talks about the distinction between a romantic comedy and a “comedy with a romance at its core,” and how the ending of the movie evolved.

For Part 1, go here.

Part 2, here.

Geoff is repped by WME.

Twitter: @DrGMLaTulippe.

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