#john cusak

I obsessively read and watch Behind The Scenes Interviews, which I really shouldn't because famous people are jerks, especially to each other, especially in romantic comedies. There's no respect because of egos. Because romantic comedies have always been about the names they cast, not necessarily the content. Most casts come out of romantic comedies hating everything about it and knowing they were there because of their name and face. Some of them, that's fine. Others... You should watch Hugh Grant's interviews about Love Actually if you haven't. Hugh Grant's interviews in general are top-notch.

Anyway, suppose you've seen a lot of cast interviews for romance movies or even just characters with intimate relations. In that case, there is an alarming amount of disrespect and borderline abusive behavior that used to happen on sets before intimacy coordinators got involved. It often gets panned as "pranks" or "just things that happen on set" because of coworkers trying to get each other to break character and ruin a shot. Sometimes, yes it can be "harmless" fun if the cast has been working together for a long time. But that's not typically the case with romantic comedies. The halitosis "prank" is one of the more common ones. They have a kiss scene, and one of the parties eats something that will cause their breath and mouth to be absolutely abhorrent to the scene partner, who has to believably kiss this person on camera repeatedly, and they don't know until they go in for the kiss.

So the first time I heard about this being inappropriate was at a time in my life when I was so pressed for cash that I got into these sites that had movies that would pay you for views, which, yes, was literally a thing before social media and even YouTube. It's now a defunct avenue, obviously, and I was a member of so many of these sites that I couldn't tell you which one had me watch media for America's Sweethearts (2001), but it was never a studio or distributor directly, of course, it was funneled through these view for pay sites. Anyway.

I'm watching an interview with Julia Roberts, and she's talking about a kiss scene with John Cusak. It's meant to be a Morning After scene, and they're supposed to kiss before getting out of bed. Well, they broke for lunch right before filming this scene, and Julia ate her typical lunch, not thinking much about it, but her lunch had a lot of garlic. So when they went back to set, they got ready to shoot the first take, and at that moment, Julia realized her breath was going to be awful, and she didn't want to do that to John, so she pulled the sheet up over her mouth out of instinct. Then John, staying in character, does the same, and they perform the scene with their mouths covered even though John drops it at one point and Julia immediately lifts it back over his mouth. Her thinking is, "Who really kisses on the morning after their first time with a person they really like? You want to gargle or something first." (This is not a direct quote because it's been decades.) So in the scene, she ad-libs asking if can use his toothbrush to brush her teeth, and when he says yes, they share a chaste kiss with their mouths covered. The director liked it so much they kept it for the following takes.

Final Cut of that scene

This actually really struck me because out of all these damn interviews I had to watch for all these different movies with people describing all of the self-labeled "horrible" things they did to each other on set, this one interview with Julia Roberts about a kiss scene with John Cusak is refreshingly honest and kind of funny in a good way, and I have forgotten all those other interviews, but not this one.

Fast forward to Red, White, and Royal Blue interviews, and this quote from Taylor Zakhar Perez about his and Nicholas Galitzine's intimacy coordinator Robbie Taylor Hunt:

“He was incredible,” Zakhar Perez says of working with Taylor Hunt. “In London there are these brand of mints called Smints, and we called him the Smint Lord because we would always come up to him and ask for a mint or Listerine strip. I didn’t want my breath to be offensive to Nick as soon as we get on set and have to be intimate with each other…”

Source

Craig : (as Maxine puppet)  Tell me, Craig, why do you love puppeteering?(as Craig Puppet)  Well Maxine, I'm not sure exactly. Perhaps the idea of becoming someone else for a little while. Being inside another skin - thinking differently, moving differently, feeling differently.(as Maxine Puppet)  Interesting, Craig.

Craig :(as Maxine Puppet) Would you like to be in place? Think what I think? Know what I know?(as Craig puppet)  More than anything, Maxine.