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Trust the Man
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 Trust the Man Production NotesTagline: Love is a four-letter word.
A smart, sophisticated comedy about the challenges of love and marriage among modern day New Yorkers, "Trust the Man" features the romantic escapades of two couples: a successful actress (Julianne Moore) and her stay at home husband (David Duchovny); and her slacker younger brother (Billy Crudup) and his aspiring novelist girlfriend Maggie Gyllenhaal). The film follows these four on their pointed, often surprising and frequently hilarious search for love in the midst of careers, family, infidelity and the ever-daunting search for Manhattan street parking.
A romantic comedy from writer/director Bart Freundlich, Trust the Man is an unflinching yet winsome exploration of modern relationships -- and modern men and women -- in all of their humor, tragedy, imperfection and triumph.
This smart, sophisticated comedy about the challenges of love and marriage follows the romantic escapades of two New York couples: successful actress Rebecca (Julianne Moore) and her Mr. Mom husband, Tom (David Duchovny); and her slacker younger brother Tobey (Billy Crudup) and his aspiring novelist girlfriend, Elaine (Maggie Gyllenhaal).
Tom and Rebecca have two kids, a virtually nonexistent sex life, and a marriage counselor (Garry Shandling) who is too baffled by the pair to offer any real help. Tobey has been dating the exasperated Elaine for eight years but can’t seem to commit to getting married and having a family.
The status quo is given a serious jolt; however, when Tom is drawn into an affair with a mother at his son’s school and Elaine finally gives Tobey an ultimatum, sending him into a fling with a sexy (and married) former college flame (Eva Mendes). When the fates of both couples culminate in an uproarious and very public finale on the stage at Lincoln Center, both Rebecca and Elaine will have to decide -- do they trust the man?
TRUST THE MAN is a charming study of this flawed foursome’s pointed, often surprising and frequently hilarious search for love in the midst of careers, family, infidelity and the ever-daunting search for Manhattan street parking. Fox Searchlight Pictures acquired distribution rights to the film following its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2005.
Trust This Man: Writer / Director Bart Freundlich Embarks on a Comedy
Having written and directed a number of films including the drama The Myth of Fingerprints, about the uneasy reunion of an emotionally crippled family over a Thanksgiving weekend, and World Traveler, which focuses on a young man who leaves his wife and child to go on an intense, soul-searching road trip, writer-director Bart Freundlich has established a reputation as an intelligent and accomplished independent filmmaker. Among his friends; however, he has also earned some well-intentioned nagging.
"My friends were always riding me because all of my films are usually so dark," says Freundlich. "They had really been pushing me to write something funny to kind of get out of this dark stage."
Producer Tim Perell, who previously produced Freundlich's World Traveler and Myth of Fingerprints, had also encouraged Freundlich to write a comedy for several years. Perell wanted Freundlich to explore his comedic side since "he's one of the funniest people I know."
What took the talented filmmaker so long? "Everybody knows Bart is funny," says production designer Kevin Thompson, who has also been a friend of Freundlich's for ten years. "I think he hesitated because he knows how hard it is to do a comedy."
Inspired by the films of Woody Allen and David O. Russell, Freundlich embarked on a journey to his lighter side. "I had been writing TRUST THE MAN over the course of four or five years," says the 36-year-old filmmaker. "I had been jotting down little tidbits for a comedy. This movie is something that just grew out of these four characters that I wanted to write about."
What resulted was a funny, touching study of the ups-and-downs of two couples in modern day Manhattan that addresses several issues that often arise in romantic relationships.
"For me, this movie is about learning how to let go of the need to control everything in your life. It's about trusting that things are going to work out if you're just true to every moment," explains Freundlich. "It's also about what buffoons men can be, and how they're just so different from women in their thinking. Women have to be patient, and men have to catch up. There's always a jockeying for position, control and power between men and women, and it can be very funny." "The film reflects how people are flawed," he continues. "Those flaws make you human and emotional, and also hysterically funny sometimes."
"One of the biggest challenges in writing TRUST THE MAN was trying to avoid the clichés of the romantic comedy while embracing all the really enjoyable parts of the genre," says Freundlich. "My idea was to begin the film as a smaller character study where the humor arose almost solely out of the relationships amongst the characters, and then to slowly loosen the reigns and have the film grow into a bigger, more `Hollywood' experience. So, by the end of the film the characters would, in a way, enter their own version of a traditional Hollywood romantic comedy."
Freudlich explains, "My hope was that by combining what was ostensibly a character piece with a bigger more traditional ending, that an audience might experience both the satisfaction of knowing the characters on a real three dimensional level (as you tend to in an independent film) and the glory of seeing everything fit together perfectly (as it so often does at the end of a big splashy romantic comedy)." "Occasionally `real life' presents these huge moments where you have the opportunity to make a big, glorious, sloppy and brave statement about your life. I wanted to give my characters that opportunity."
The Friends and Family Plan
In light of the screenplay's deft mixture of drama and comedy, casting the film was exceptionally important. Freundlich developed a concept that drove his choice of actors: "I liked the idea of having people in the movie who were a little bit of a surprise in a comedy," he explains. "Obviously, Julie, David, Maggie and Billy have done a lot of different things, but you don't think of them as comedians, necessarily, and you don't think of them as romantic comedy stars." This strategy lent the film "a basis in reality, which was important," says Freundlich. "I could go as far as I wanted but still have a real, emotionally rooted story."
Casting went smoothly, according to Tim Perell, mainly because of Freundlich's popularity as a collaborator. "Bart is a real magnet for actors," says the producer. "They love working with him, so that made it easy."
First and foremost, Freundlich hoped that his wife, four-time Oscar nominee Julianne Moore, might agree to star as Rebecca, a neurotic actress, wife and mother who constantly fears she's one play away from career oblivion. Freundlich had previously directed his wife in World Traveler and The Myth of Fingerprints.
"For Rebecca, he always had Julianne in his head," says Perell. "That character needed to be played by somebody with a tremendous amount of strength, independence and resolve, and that is who Julie is. She was a very easy fit for that character."
"I thought the script was great. It's very funny, entertaining, realistic and, finally, moving. It's just an absolutely delightful, charming script," says Moore.
In addition, she continues, "The movie is very frank about relationships and the way that we deal with each other, and also the differences between men and women."
Freundlich was especially excited to work with his wife on this particular role, as he was eager to display her rarely shown comedic side. He explains, "There's no doubt in my mind that she's the best actress alive-I also think she's very funny. People don't use her in that way a lot.
"I want to challenge Julie, because I know she can do anything," he continues. "It's like wanting to watch someone who's really talented try something new, because you know they're going to come up with something better than you could have possibly imagined. As a director, and even more as a writer, that's such a gift. You just know that she's going to mine the material for more than you could have hoped for."
Moore indeed saw much to explore in the material. "I think what you see with these characters is what a regular downtown New York life is like," she says. "It's really about the inside of anybody's relationship, about what your life is like as a married person, and the family. It celebrates male and female friendships as well. Bart himself values marriage and relationships and what it means to be in a family, to have a community and friends and to be married - the romanticism as well as the reality of it. Bart shows the pitfalls and the difficulties, but then celebrates the joy of it all, too," adds Moore.
Since Freundlich also wrote the part of Tom specifically for friend David Duchovny, the actor was the next to receive the script. It was Duchovny's hilarious turns playing a preening, sexually malevolent version of himself on "The Larry Sanders Show" that convinced Freundlich and Perell that he could really shine in the part of Tom, Rebecca's husband, who has quit his advertising executive job in order to be a stay-at-home dad but falls into an affair with a mother at his son's school.
Duchovny read the script and liked it, and quickly agreed to sign on. "Those of us who know Bart know that he's got a terrific sense of humor and is a talented filmmaker," says Duchovny. "We've been waiting for him to make a comedy. I think that his movies, although they've been great, haven't reflected his sense of humor."
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Eva Mendes and Billy Crudup in Trust the Man.
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