Based on Stephen McCauley's 1987 funny-sad novel about a straight woman who leans on, then falls for, her gay male best friend, "Object" has had more leading ladies linked with it than Matt Damon. Among them: Debra Winger, Kyra Sedgwick, Sarah Jessica Parker, Uma Thurman, and Winona Ryder. And it was put in turnaround by not one but two studios: Twentieth Century Fox (which ultimately reclaimed the movie) and Paramount. Why all the fuss? Explains producer Laurence Mark ("As Good As It Gets"), "One of its two leads is a gay character, which wasn't, on the business side of things, helping matters."

The studios weren't the only fickle ones. When Aniston first read for the part, Hytner ("The Crucible") sent the Friend a rejection letter. Five months after her audition, a studio turnaround forced Hytner to rethink his lineup and Aniston was in. Rudd (the object of Alicia Silverstone's affection in "Clueless") was signed to play her gay buddy - a role that had been attached at times to Robert Downey Jr. and Keanu Reeves.

Adapted by Tony-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein ("The Heidi Chronicales"), the unusual romance ("In the trailer, the guy who does the voice-over is the romantic-comedy voice-over guy," says Rudd, "but it doesn't fit in any category") may sound a bit like "My Best Friend's Wedding", but it's there that the similarities end. For one thing, "Object"'s stars come close to consummating their relationship - something Julia Roberts and Rupert Everett never even considered. "Under the right circumstances," says Hytner, "with the right amount of red wine, anybody can...anybody." For another, Aniston's character is pregnant (by her boyfriend, "Mad About You"'s Pankow - a role originally assigned to Stephen Baldwin). To pull off the fake tummy, Aniston sported "a 10-pound unitard with padding, and I'll tell ya," she says, "it was fun to walk around in that lovely outfit in 105-degree, smelly, garbaged New York City."

Rudd's method of getting into character was more esoteric. "I showed up on set," recalls Zahn ("That Thing You Do!"), who plays Rudd's heterosexual brother, "and Paul was wearing this brand-new crisp T-shirt with a beautiful air-brushed picture of Brad Pitt."

- article reproduced without permission from Entertainment Weekly's 1998 Spring Movie Preview (#419/420)

Soundtrack
The soundtrack for the movie is now available from Pangea Records. Apart from an original score by George Fenton, it includes two recordings of the song "You Were Meant For Me", performed by Sting.

You Were Meant For Me
Life was a song, (till) you came along I lay awake the whole night through If I should dare to think you care This is what I'd say to you You were meant for me, and I was meant for you
		Nature fashioned you and when she was done You are all those good things, rolled into one You're like a plaintive melody, that never let's me be I'm content the angels must have sent you And they meant you just for me

-Written by Nacio Herb Brown & Arthur Freed; reproduced without permission.

Rolling Stone Article
-The following article is reproduced without permission from Rolling Stone #785

A Date Flick About Girls and the Gay Guys They Love
Jennifer Aniston ups the ante on screen romance as a woman who wants sex from her gay-male best friend.
BY PETER TRAVERS

Picking up where Julia Roberts and Rupert Everett dared not go in "My Best Friend's Wedding", namely the bedroom, Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd unzip for action in "The Object of My Affection". She's straight, he's gay. Yet here they are fondling, lip-locking, nearly (having sex). You've got to ask: Is there a future in such a relationship? This romantic comedy, directed with a bracing respect for sexual confusion by Nicholas Hytner ("The Crucible"), tackles the issue with uncommon intelligence and humor, and, OK, the occasional slide into sitcom.

Aniston, a friend in need of a solid movie script - having been saddled with "Picture Perfect", "She's the One" and "'Til There was You" - finally gets one courtesy of Tony-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein ("The Heidi Chronicles", "The Sisters Rosensweig"). In her screenwriting debut, Wasserstein adapts Stephen McCauley's bittersweet 1987 novel with a refreshingly literate snap. She adds new characters and comic turns without losing the book's spirit.

The most radical point of departure is the point of view. Wasserstein sees the film through Nina Borowski (Aniston), a New York social worker who learns she's pregnant by Vince McBride (John Pankow), the lawyer she dates but doesn't love. McCauley chose to write his novel from the perspective of George Hansen (Rudd), the gay grade-school teacher with whom Nina shares her deepest feelings; she also rents him a spare room in her Brooklyn apartment. It's George, a kindred spirit when it comes to food, art and ballroom dancing (they take lessons), whom Nina asks to help raise her child. "What about Vince?" asks George. Says Nina: "He's not home to me - you are." Problems arise when Nina finds herself sexually drawn to George and George begins to respond.

Got that? George doesn't quite, which makes him a mass of conflicted feelings and the story's most compelling character. Despite a beguiling turn by Aniston, who keeps showing promise of growing beyond her TV roots, the movie belongs to Rudd, who is effortlessly terrific. Best known as Alicia Silverstone's step-brother turned boyfriend in "Clueless", Rudd has been largely relegated to the background, as in "William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet" and "The Locusts". No more. This is a performance possessed of the sweet magic that makes a star.

George first meets Nina at a snob dinner party thrown by Nina's sister Constance, played with elegant sass by Allison Janney. Constance, whose husband (Alan Alda) is a name-dropping literary agent, is honoring George for having directed her daughter in the school play. Happy times until George learns at the party that he is being dumped by his vain lover, Dr Robert Joley (Tim Daly). That's when Nina invites George to move in. Why not? They're both among the walking romantic wounded.

Hytner, a young British theater director who scored a 1994 smash on both sides of the Atlantic with a passionate revival of "Carousel", makes the attraction between George and Nina as intriguing as it is impossible. It's Nina who raises the sexual temperature of the relationship. "Who's the first person you ever slept with?" asks Nina, who is thrilled when George names a girl. Cuddling in bed, Nina puts her hands on George's chest, kisses him hotly and tugs at his pants. George knows they've gone too far; Nina doesn't. To unlight her fire, George brings home a lover, Paul (Amo Gulinello), for noisy sex. Nina feels rejected. Ditto Paul's mentor, an aging drama critic beautifully played by Nigel Hawthorne, who starred for Hytner in the acclaimed stage and screen versions of "The Madness of King George". "One shouldn't be too hard on onself if the object of one's affection returns the favor with less enthusiasm than one might have hoped," says the critic in a futile effort to console Nina and himself.

In these scenes, the film transcends its gay/straight theme to cut to the imbalance at the core of all relationships. Aniston and Rudd show us how friendship is more complicated than sex, which is one reason "The Object of My Affection" is the most provocative date flick around. Of the pain that follows when the ground shifts under a friendship, McCauley wrote: "We would grow older and our faces would change and one day we would be strangers to each other. And there was nothing to do about it." Those lines aren't in the movie, but their ability to hit home is easy to read in the eloquent eyes of two actors who - and here's the tricky part - make something memorably funny and touching out of moonshine.