Why did "L.A. Confidential" director Curtis Hanson wait a full year after completing his neo-noir masterpiece to return to the director's chair?

"I really wanted to go for some seriously good performances again, but this time with more humor," he says.

He found what he was looking for when producer Scott Rudin ("A Civil Action") offered him "Wonder Boys," a script by Steve Kloves ("The Fabulous Baker Boys") based on the novel by Michael Chabon, about a writer and professor (Grady Tripp, played by Michael Douglas) who, in his youth, was hailed as a major literary talent and now, in middle age, is floundering. Both novel and film follow him through three meandering, tragicomic days of debauchery in and around Pittsburgh with his editor (Robert Downey, Jr.) and star student (Tobey Maguire). Complicating matters further are Tripp's failing marriage and his pregnant lover, played by Frances McDormand ("Fargo").

McDormand, whom Hanson cast after seeing her in an off-broadway production of Oedipus, says she was attracted to the role because "it's a different thing to see a more mature relationship onscreen, which Michael and I represent. When a 42-year-old woman says, 'I'm pregnant', it's a little different than an eighteen-year-old."

The actress got a reminder of what it was like to be eighteen when the film -- which was shot entirely in and around Pittsburgh -- brought cast and crew to the campus of Carnegie-Mellon University. "Everybody's out on the lawn with their guitars and their Frisbees," she says. "I kept screaming, 'Kegger! Time for a kegger!'"

Maguire, ("Plesantville") was a little less at ease on the shoot, perhaps because his character is at once a virginal budding genuis an a depressed, mendacious misfit. "It's a scary character to play," he says. "You don't want to ham it up, but you still want it to be funny. He's a spooky kind of funny."

Like "L.A. Confidential", "Wonder Boys" is as much about its' setting as it is about its' characters. "When I first read the script," Hanson says, "I thought it was one of those pictures that could be made anywhere. Then I came to Pittsburgh and looked around, and felt that it had to be done here. It's a city that's enjoyed a glorious past. Do you try to live in the past, or do you try to move on?" The director poses the same question about his career. "L.A. Confidential is my Arsonist's Daughter," he says referring to "Boys" protagonist Tripp's acclaimed early novel. "Do you try to remake it, do a sequel? What I try to do is relax and go on to something else, knowing that whatever is next, it will not be an "L.A. Confidential"."