Movie production notes: Walk of shame

When writer-director Steven Brill began working on Walk of Shame, he was interested in exploring the unlimited comedic potential in a story about being lost in one’s own backyard.

He set the action in Los Angeles, which, in addition to offering a sprawling melting pot of diverse cultures and economic landscapes, is also a city where people rarely venture beyond their social circles and neighbourhoods.

He was inspired to throw his main character in a completely foreign location, only equipped with her wits to lead her home.

“I love the idea of someone trying to do something that should be very easy, such as simply getting home, but ends up taking incredible effort,” Brill says of his Walk of Shame narrative.

“I wanted to compound all the things that could go wrong in one day. It made me wonder to what extent I could get somebody stranded right in the middle of modern day society?” As he found, the possibilities were endless.

Brill, whose writing and directing career includes many motion pictures and television programs—including the feature Mr. Deeds starring Adam Sandler—began writing Walk of Shame at Soho House, a members-only club in West Hollywood, California.

He recalls, “The restaurant on top of the club overlooks all of Los Angeles, offering a 360 degrees. I looked out toward downtown and said, ‘Okay, I’m going to start my character’s journey there and I’m going to have her walking up Wilshire Boulevard, pretty much throughout the entire movie.’”

It was there – high above the City of Angels – where Brill imaged all the calamitous situations his character could encounter on a walk from the squalid streets of downtown to Hollywood. “You’d think it would be easy,” Brill says of Meghan’s journey, “but it’s not.”

It was during a game of golf that Brill pitched his idea for Walk of Shame to Tom Rosenberg, the Academy Award-winning producer of Million Dollar Baby, and producer Gary Lucchesi at Lakeshore Entertainment.

Fuelling the idea

Brill laughs with a bit of friendly advice, “If your father ever says, ‘Learn to play golf, it will take you far in business,’ don’t argue with him. I have a social relationship with Tom and Gary, and we’ve been playing pretty much every weekend for at least four or five years. We enjoy each other’s company as well as the competition and camaraderie. Every once in a while I’ll run movie ideas by Tom and he’ll tell me if it’s a good idea or a bad idea."

"I remember walking up to the 16th hole at Lakeside [Country Club] and I said, ‘Okay, what about this? A girl wakes up in the morning after a crazy night out, and she has to get home. She doesn’t have her phone, doesn’t have her car and all hell breaks loose.’ Tom looked at me and said, ‘That could be good.’”

Producer Rosenberg says, “I like comedies about people in real-life situations. What Steve [Brill] was able to achieve was to tell this relatively simple story while exploring underlying diverse social forces that exist in Los Angeles. His story was unique and it presented very funny social collisions.”

Producer Gary Lucchesi, who has worked with Rosenberg on many box office hits, including The Lincoln Lawyer and Underworld, recalls: “Over the course of playing golf with Steve, we grew to like him very much. When he talked about ‘Walk of Shame,’ we went for it. There’s a big market for comedies if you can make the film well."

Casting

"We had great good fortune in casting Elizabeth Banks for the role of Meghan Miles. She’s a wonderful comedienne and she looks spectacular in this short yellow dress, which is definitely not the type of skimpy outfit that her character would ever wear in public. But she rocks it, and she looks great and she was just a delight to work with,” Lucchesi said.

Initially, production designer Perry Blake was not convinced that the main character should be wearing a yellow dress throughout the film.

“Nobody looks good in yellow,” he says. “Then I started thinking about what’s yellow in the city environment. Mainly street signs like caution signs and some fire hydrants and things like that. We did a camera test with Elizabeth in that yellow dress against some grey city backgrounds and it was immediately obvious that Steve’s choice was the right colour."

"It’s really awesome because no matter what, even when we’re in a very colourful environment like Koreatown, it pops out. The first time I saw her in it, I thought, ‘Wow, she’s going to pull it off. She looks fantastic!’ It was a bold choice and it worked well.”

Working with Elizabeth Banks

“I call her Banks, and always have,” Brill says of his good friend. “I’ve known her for ten years now and as I was writing the script, I was thinking, ‘Oh, my God, she would be incredible as Meghan!’ It’s a demanding role in that it is one of the few movies you’ll see that has one person taking every scene, in every part of the movie with a few cutaways.”

Brill and the producers agreed that Banks was a terrific choice for the role and were delighted when she accepted the challenge.

“Not only is she beautiful but Banks is the funniest person of all time,” Brill says of his star. “She can hang with anybody comedically. She’s someone who’s just right at the top of their game and she has proven that she can hold her own against some of the best comedy talents in the business.”

Banks, who graduated Magna cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania, and then went on to attend the Advanced Training Program at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, says that she has always enjoyed playing physical characters like Meghan.

“I’m a very athletic person and I love running and jumping and doing stunts and I’m always looking for some way to do more of that. ‘Walk of Shame’ gave me the perfect opportunity. I model myself after the great physical comediennes like Lucille Ball. I find I’m much more Mr. Bean [the British comedian] than people expect.”

The story also evoked Banks’ own walks of shame, or as she calls them, “Strides of pride.” “I certainly have had a few experiences that I would definitely not want to repeat,” she grins. “But unlike those events, this movie makes you start laughing at the beginning and you never stop. It will take people on a fun ride. To me this film is ‘The Wizard of Oz’ meets ‘The Odyssey.’ It’s a classic tale of self-discovery in the face of great odds and how you can meet people and expect one thing from them and then they surprise you and they give you something else. I think the people who Meghan meets on her journey, the ones who she’s most afraid of, actually turn out to be the most helpful to her.”

Brill's walks of shame

Much like Elizabeth Banks, writer-director Brill admits to experiencing his own walks of shame on one occasion or another.

When this story idea first came to him, however, he didn’t think of his own past but was struck with the image of a woman waking up one morning in an unfamiliar place—with the obstacle of getting home without the use of a car, a cell phone, or money.

“It was a challenge for me to write the story and keep it plausible and logical and fun and funny,” the filmmaker says. “But I wanted to create a character who was a good girl and had to essentially go through a lot of potentially bad things to get to her destination. I started thinking about Homer’s The Odyssey, and all the things that go into a hero’s journey.”

Knight in shining armour

For the pivotal role of Gordon, the bartender who rescues Meghan when she’s too inebriated to drive home from her night on the town, James Marsden was the ideal leading man to serve as her knight in shining armour.

“He’s a good guy who wants to take care of her,” Marsden says of Gordon. “He writes novels, not screenplays, which for Los Angeles is refreshing. When he wakes up and finds Megan gone, and that she left her cell phone behind, he realises that she might be in trouble. So he gets ahold of her friends and tries to track her down.”

“James Marsden is someone I wanted to work with for ten years,” Brill says. “I did a movie called ‘Without a Paddle,’ and he was this close to being in it. I was disappointed that it didn’t happen. I never forgot his comic presence and leading man good looks, and that he was such a great guy. I tried again about four years ago and now I finally get to work with him. But to be honest, I didn’t think we would be able to get him for this role. I was talking to Banks about who we could cast and she said, ‘What about James Marsden?’ I said I didn’t know if he would do it and she said, ‘Well, let’s call him and find out.’ She literally picked up the phone and left him a message.”

“Elizabeth and I worked together a long time ago and we’ve kept in touch since,” Marsden says of his friendship with Banks. “And she’s one of those people who knows everybody in the world, so you feel like if you know Elizabeth, you know everyone,” explains the star of Enchanted.

“Over the past couple of years, we’ve been looking for something to do together and this came up and it was a no-brainer for me. She’s great, and it was a fun job. It’s nice to step into something like this when you know the other actor. I get her humour. She’s not afraid. She really goes for it and that makes you go for it, too. I think at some point in this movie, I’m actually wearing her yellow dress and this is because of Elizabeth. She said, ‘Let’s show our characters having a good time, having drinks at the apartment and doing silly stuff.’”

Although James Marsden and Elizabeth Banks only share the screen together in the beginning and end of the film, producer Rosenberg considers it a fortunate break that they were able to cast Marsden in the film.

“Although Elizabeth and James are only together for a short while in the beginning, the audience has to want them to reunite. What James was able to bring to the screen was amazing. He’s handsome, but he’s likeable. He’s decent, but he’s fun. He’s like the perfect boyfriend. I really mean this. He was ideal for her. And he’s a very cool guy. I hope we work together again very soon. He was a great presence always.”

Info supplied by Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, FilmDistrict and Lakeshore Entertainment