The Proposal - Anne Fletcher interview

ANNE Fletcher, director of Step Up and 27 Dresses, talks about working with Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock on The Proposal and why Massachusetts had to double for Alaska… She was speaking at a UK press conference for the film.

Q. You’ve described Sandra Bullock as being fearless. Can you elaborate?
Anne Fletcher: I think she’s fearless because she doesn’t know how beautiful she is. She’s fearless because she’ll do anything for the movie, for the joke, for the betterment of the film – and not many people will go to that level. Her body is very funny! But she just goes for it. Honestly, when I got this movie and went to go and scout locations and stuff… as a director you have the best gift with Sandra because you know she can and will do anything for the best interests of the film. So, you can look at a ladder she may have to climb at low tide and I can think: “She’ll go down that and I wouldn’t even have to think twice about putting her in 5-inch pumps and a tight dress.” You have such a great vehicle to be able to do anything.

Q. How did you know that Ryan Reynolds had the chemistry that would make the comedy between these characters work so well?
Anne Fletcher: I created that! He didn’t have it when I first me him but I gave him that chemistry [laughs]. You don’t know if the actors are going to have chemistry until you actually start filming. They can get along, they can be friends for years, they can be hilarious as people, but you don’t know if it’ll actually work until the cameras start rolling. Fortunately, most of the scenes where they have that rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue have to happen at the very, very beginning, so it started right from the get-go and it worked. I didn’t have to worry about those things once I knew it was working.

Q. Why did you use Massachusetts as a body double for Alaska? Wasn’t Alaska available?
Anne Fletcher: Honestly, it simply came down to Massachusetts having tax breaks that Alaska didn’t have at the time. Thank God we didn’t push it too hard because at the time when we shot the movie it rained in Alaska for two months straight! So, we would never have shot anything if we’d been there. But we decided to design Alaska in Massachusetts with as much respect as possible. We didn’t Hollywood-ise it, we did it authentically so the people of Sitka would be pleased with what we’ve done.

Q. Did the age difference between your two leads ever pose a problem? Or was that part of the appeal?
Anne Fletcher: It’s written as a May/December romance. Sandy is technically by numbers older than Ryan. But at the end of the day you can’t sell this as a May/December romance, whether it’s technical or not. It’s not The Graduate. It’s this. In life, they’d date. So for me personally, if I couldn’t believe it I wouldn’t be able to direct it.

Q. The Step Up movies were a different genre entirely. Did you notice any differences or extra challenges moving from films such as those to romantic movies such as 27 Dresses and The Proposal?
Anne Fletcher: No, I don’t think so. There weren’t that many challenges. We had some script things that we discovered as we went. There was also the challenge of trying to do a big movie in a small amount of time. But I think that from dancing and choreographing in film, to doing Step Up and then 27 Dresses and this… all of those experiences lend themselves to this moment and inform your decisions.