Co-written and adapted by Stephen McCauley and Wendy Wasserstein
Directed by Nicholas Hytner
Released by Twentieth Century Fox
The Object of My Affection is based on the acclaimed novel by Stephen McCauley. The novel focuses on the relationship between George Mullen, a gay man, and Nina Borowski, with whom he shares an apartment. George moves into Nina's apartment after breaking up with his boyfriend, Joley. Nina becomes pregnant by her boyfriend, Howard, but decides not to tell him. She wants to have the baby and raise it by herself, with the help of George. George is at first very wary of Nina's plans, but warms up to the idea. Howard learns about Nina's pregnancy and wants to help, but Nina's not too pleased. George goes to Vermont for a weekend and meets someone new - Paul. His relationship with Nina is tested...
Well, that's sort of the rough plot of the novel. It's quite enjoyable to read, though the action is a bit on the tame side for a feature film. The movie is different from the book in many aspects. "Object" has been spiced up a lot for the screen.
Paul and Jennifer Aniston are the leads, with Timothy Daly (of "Wings" fame) playing Paul's no-good boyfriend, Dr. Joley. Nigel Hawthorne plays "a pompous theater critic" and Alan Alda is Jennifer's " social climbing literary agent" brother-in law. Allison Janney plays Jennifer's stepsister, another character added to the film version.. These last three characters do not appear in the original book, but the movie has been adapted for the screen by Stephen McCauley, the original author, and Wendy Wasserstein, a noted screenwriter. Directing is Nicholas Hytner, who recently lensed The Crucible.
Stephen Baldwin, who was originally going to play the role of Jennifer Aniston's boyfriend, was replaced by John Pankow (Ira on Mad About You). Apparently there was a conflict of opinion on how the character should be played...
Jennifer Aniston was hounded by press on the set of the movie. They wanted to get pics of her "pregnant" as Nina. Fox did a good job keeping Jen under wraps...
Shooting was in New York, during June and July 1997. Some of the movie was filmed in Coney Island (the book has the characters going to the amusement park a number of times). The film was released April 17, 1998.
You can see a few pictures from The Object of My Affection in the Paul Rudd Gallery page.
The 10-year journey of Object, based on Stephen McCauley's 1987 novel about the romantic but nonsexual friendship between a gay man and a straight woman, has involved on e straight female screenwriter, two gay male directors, two studios that hot-potatoed the film five times, and the almost participation of Debra Winger, Winona Ryder, Uma Thurman, Kyra Sedgwick, Matthew Modine and Keanu Reeves.
"I've been asked, 'Did you write this because of [the popularity of] Rupert Everett's character in My Best Friend's Wedding?' " says Object screenwriter Wendy Wasserstein, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning 1989 play The Heidi Chronicles focused ont he same type of friendship. "And I'm like, 'Honey, I started writing this when Rupert Everett was 10.' "
In 1987, six years before an audience accepted Ton Hanks as a gay man in Philadelphia, producer Laurence Mark (Jerry Maguire) optioned McCauley's novel for Twentieth Century Fox, with Wasserstein attached to write the script. "I guess I assumed, given the subject matter, that it would never happen," admits McCauley. But Mark thought Wasserstein might be the antidote to such box office poison: "We weren't interested in making this movie specifically for gay audiences," he says. "You'd like this movie to have a broader appeal, and a way of doing that is to represent it from a straight woman's point of view. Otherwise, you're travelling down a narrow corridor."
Wasserstein changed the story's perspective from George's to Nina's and added a stepsister and brother-in-law (Allison Janney and Alan Alda) for Nina and a somewhat pathetic theater critic (Nigel Hawthorne). But when she handed in her draft-the first of more than a dozen-a nervous Fox passed.
In 1989 Paramount stepped in, pairing Wasserstein and Urban Cowboy director James Bridges (who died in 1993) with plans to develop the project for Winger and Modine. After two years, the studio still wouldn't greenlight it; Object bounced back to Fox in 1991, and then to Paramount again. This time though, Wasserstein says that Paramount suggested a quick fix: Have George overcome his proclivity for men and bed Nina so the pair could live happily ever after. "That seemed really wrong," Wasserstein says charitably.
The ping-pong game came to a temporary halt in 1992. After a reading in New York with Matthew Broderick as a still-gay George and Sarah Jessica Parker as Nina, Wasserstein decided the script was worth even more of her time - but that she'd prefer to work without a studio pressuring her. With Mark's permission, she took Object off the market. "Barry Diller once told me, 'Someday they'll make this movie, and then you'll have nothing else to do with your life,' " she says with a laugh.
Wasserstein then turned to her friend director Nicholas Hytner (The Crucible), who agreed to help her. He and Wasserstein began two years of typing, adding new characters and expanding on the characters' emotional lives. Returning to the market, the fresh script went back to Paramount.
And the boomerang toss started again. Paramount "professed themselves to be delighted" with the results, syas Hytner. "And then they weren't." (A Paramount exec says that a commitment to a similarly themed project,The Next Best Thing - which will shoot later this year - forced the studio into passing on Object.) Hytner then turned to Fox production chief Tom Rothman, who has overseen Hytner's The Madness of King George at Goldwyn and the Crucible at Fox.
In January 1997, Rothman agreed to take Object out of mothballs if the filmmakers could keep the budget to a minuscule $15 million. "There's no question that Object Of My Affection was risky," says Rothman, "but I think the audience is looking for more original subject matter." Rothman admits he also wanted to foster long-term relationships with Hytner, Wasserstein, and, oh, yeah, Aniston, who had served the studio well in last year's $31 million-grossing Picture Perfect. (The other actressed became victims of scheduling delays.)
Ironically, the years Object spent stalled may have helped, since it now follows such hits as My Best Friend's Wedding and As Good as It Gets, which featured unlikely - and endearing - relationships between gay men and straight women. While the topic may be trendy, Rudd believes the appeal of troubled romance is not. "Requited love is wonderful to experience," he says. "But very dull to watch."
by Owen Gleiberman
The sitcom ciphers in The Object Of My Affection (Twentieth Century Fox) aren't characters, exactly. They're bundles of signifiers who mover thorugh the world caroming off each other's readily scannable traits. How do we know that Nina (Jennifer Aniston), a cutely alluring Brooklyn social worker, is stuck with a boyfriend who's all wrong for her? Because Vince (John Pankow), her steady of several years, is a pushy, loudmouth jerk - a loawyer - with bad hair, ratty teeth, and a smarmy way of needling people about their insecurities. It's anyone's guess how these two ever made it past the second date.
How do we know that Nina has fallen for her new roommate, George (Paul Rudd), a sweet, cherubically sexy - and openly gay - first-grade teacher who has just been dumped by a loutish lover of his own? Because the two become touchy-feely soul mates within five minutes and proceed to take ballroom-dance classes together. Adapted from Stephen McCauley's 1987 novel by the playwritght Wendy Wasserstein (The Heidi Chronicles) and directed by Nicholas Hytner (The Crucible), The Object of My Affection has been spun out of the familiar urban coffee-klatch myth that the only guys left who are attractive and nice have to be gay. The movie inevitably plays like an extension of the final scene of My Best Friend's Wedding, in which Julia Roberts had to settle for Rupert Everett's snappish gay comrade in lieu of a husband. There's a bizarre, pre-feminist masochism to these new women's pictures: They're saying that the heriones have been so beaten down by their minuscule romantic options that they have given up even trying to find sex and love in the same place.
When Nina discovers that she's pregnant (by Vince, incidentally), she makes a revolutionary decision: She'll have the baby and raise it with George, her platonic best friend/symbolic husband. George though, falls for a hot young actor, and Nina is forced to spend the rest of the film confronting the revelation the audience has long ago come to: that this "progressive" arrangement is doomed to fail.
Nina, of course, never displays the slightest interest in trying to find - dare I even say it? - a heterosexual boyfriend. Instead of gently suggesting that shemay be running away from life, the film supports her anzious withdrawal from the dating wars by turning everyone on screen into a one-dimensional cad. As if Vince weren't Mr. Wrong enough, Nina's name-dropping stepsister (Alison Janney) tries to set her up with a slogan-spouting advertising executive (Bradley White). The stepsister is married to an unctuous literary superagent (Alan Alda), and George's brother (Steve Zahn) is a horny-snake physician who rotates "fiancees." Is it any wonder Nina is lonely? Wasserstein, it's clear, intends these characters to parody modern relationship perils, but there's a difference between acknowledging romantic unhappiness and wallowing in desperation. The Object of My Affection is so riddled with cultural stereotrypes, woe-is-me neurotic mopiness, and glib therapeutic compassion that by the end all it leaves you with is a waxy buildup of falseness. Rating: C-
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Last updated: Tuesday July 07 1998 - 12:03:52 AM
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY FEATURE ARTICLE
"Boy Meets Girl, Boy Meets Boy..."
After 10 years Hollywood finally gets in bed in The Object Of My Affection
by Rebecca Ascher-Walsh
"Love," a Hollywood unknown named Ovid once wrote, "is a kind of warfare," but romance ain't nothing compared with the tension-fraught negotiations of movie-making. Especially in the case ofThe Object Of My Affection, in which Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd are Nina and George, a star-crossed couple who unfortunately want the same thing in bed: a sexy, funny man.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY FILM REVIEW
Straight, No Chaser
In The Object of My Affection, Jennifer Aniston's sitcom-cute social worker loses the dating game and tries to score with a gay bachelor
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