Hello, Goodbye

Was it easier working on Love and Goodbye with
some distance? After 10 years you must’ve
felt less upset about the failed relationship that
inspired it.It’s hard to say. But I think
I’ve learned a lot about being a filmmaker in
the past 10 years and I was able to do things with
this movie I wouldn’t have been able to back then.
I’m happy I waited.

The characters are really unique: You’ve got
Marcel, a foreigner who is reserved but passionately
devoted to love, and Kyle, who is a beautiful free
spirit and sings in a rock band. Was it hard
casting for the film? It was the hardest film to cast because the
characters were so specific. We didn’t cast
Kyle, Simon Miller, until the very end. We saw a lot of
people for that role over the summer of 2007. Finally Simon
came in and he seemed so perfect. We took a bit of a
chance because we were up against the wire, but he was
right for the character. And he does his own singing
in the film, which wasn’t a requirement but really
added something.

The music is incredible. I was singing the theme
song in the shower today. The songs were definitely intended to help tell
the story. I had some friends who were in a band years
ago and they let me have access to some of their
music. A few other tracks were actually big pop hits in
Sweden in the '80s, like “What’s the
Colour of Love,” which was originally done by
these sisters, Lili & Susie. Adam Joseph, who produced
and did all the studio recordings with the band, was
really great.

Is Justin Tensen, who plays Marcel, French? The
accent is really believable. Well, that’s an interesting story. As an
actor I’d been discriminated against for being
a foreigner. So I really wanted to not cast an American
as Marcel. I guess originally I thought he’d be a
Swede, since I was planning on playing the role. We
read a lot of actors for Marcel and Justin did an
amazing job. He was the first person we cast. But
he’s not French -- he’s Canadian.

Although it’s certainly not hard-core,
there’s a fair amount of nudity and sex in
the movie. Both Simon and Justin are certainly
easy on the eyes, but is it awkward filming scenes like that? Putting the sex scenes in is admittedly
something I did to make the film a little more
inviting. We asked the actors about their comfort with
nudity when they read for the parts. And also, sex is a part
of a relationship -- I didn’t want to shy away
from that. Both Simon and Justin were good about it,
and I had experience with sex scenes from the other
films I’ve done. When you get down to doing the
blocking and who’s positioned where, it kind of
kills a lot of the tension or awkwardness.