For A Good Time, Call... is about all things girly and all things pink. Don't let its racy premise fool you, this film is bursting with female camaraderie and wholesome fun. After all, it's about two girls starting a phone sex line, not an actual escort service. Lighthearted, sure – but not without shaking things up and touching on some heavy duty subjects and making a bold statement about the modern woman and the challenges she faces in regards to sexuality and forming and maintaining relationships. So, worried that the wrong director may skew the material, screenwriters Katie Naylon and Lauren Miller (who also stars in the film) were careful about who got their hands on their work.
"He worried that a straight man would oversexualize it and a woman would over sentimentalize it, so being a gay man he thought he should direct the movie," Miller explains of what factored into their decision to go with famous short film director, Jamie Travis, who was growing tired of reading so many "testosterone-driven scripts."
Ultimately, the greatest challenge for everyone in making this film would be to maintain a good balance between the sweet and the sexy, and always portray women in a positive light. Travis feared that the film "could've gone too raunchy and too dark" if that balance wasn't sustained. So, Ari Graynor, who plays the film's wild child character, Katie (based on Naylon), made sure she was over the top for the sake of comedy, but never portrayed her character as a sex object or caricature."
Yes, we have this phone sex line and yes, we say some crazy things. But, my goal was to make phone sex funny first before anything, and never tittilate it by any means," she says, further explaining that the message behind the film is what ultimately made her decide to get onboard.
"It's a sex positive movie. There can often be so much shame about women and their sexuality and owning that part of yourself and using it as a way to get to know yourself better. But also, I think in this movie, there's also an emotional attachment to the sex part," she says.
Both romance and raunch are used as tools in this movie to drive the real story, which is that of female friendship, so don't expect to see too much focus on a love interest. "We just wanted to write a story about two girls becoming friends, so we decided to use the romantic comedy structure and flip it on its head," says Naylon, whose script is opening doors to new genres and unexplored female roles in cinema, further propelling the trend set into motion by last year's Bridesmaids.
"It's not a documentary about sex or whatever. It's about these girls and their friendship and discovering who they are as individuals," explains Miller. "Female friendships are delicate and they're layered and they're tricky. Sometimes your best friend is not a clone of you and they can enrich your life and open you up. Just because someone peed in your hair in college doesn't mean they won't be your best friend ten years later."
It's understood that viewers will enter the theatre expecting something different than what they receive, but the makers are banking on the possibility that this is a good thing. "What people are going to think is it's a raunchy sex comedy, which on one level it is," says Naylon, "but they're going to be surprised at how sweet it really is." | RDW
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