When I finally spoke to Cohen two days later, his first statement was, "I heard about the story you were doing yesterday and loved it. I want to support this film any way I can." When I told him then that I'd been in contact with his publicist for weeks on end and hadn't made any headway at all, he snorted and said, "Now you've got my cell phone number, feel free to use it whenever you want to talk to me." And people wonder why publicists have such a horrible reputation.
CHRIS NEUMER: So yeah, I liked the movie. It’s a damn fine piece of filmmaking.
SCOTT COHEN: And I had everything to do with that.
CHRIS NEUMER: Exactly. Now you know why I’m hitting you early on in the process. I know who the important people are.
SCOTT COHEN: That’s good.
CHRIS NEUMER: How did you first come onto this project?
SCOTT COHEN: I came on like everybody else: I auditioned for it. I actually auditioned for it. I really liked the script. And I really wanted it because it was a New York job, which I hadn’t done in a long time. It was an independent movie and I loved the character, it was something that I hadn’t really done before. Sort of a romantic lead in a romantic comedy that has a real transition in him. He starts off as a real prick. He’s very sharp and intelligent and ends up kind of being sweet and sympathetic. I auditioned for it and at first they didn’t want me and I got really depressed about it. Then they couldn’t find anybody and they had called a friend of mine, they called Camryn Mannheim, who is a friend I think of Heather Juergensen and she said, "We’re looking for this guy, we’ve seen some people, but we’re not sure," and Camryn said, "What about Scott Cohen?" and Heather said, "We’ve seeing Scott Cohen and we’re not sure, he might be too dark for us."
CHRIS NEUMER: Too dark?
SCOTT COHEN: Yeah. And Camryn was like, "What are you kidding me? He’s the best actor ever. You guys have to be fools." And they were like, "Well, maybe we’ll see…" Then they wanted to read me–it was a month after I auditioned, and I thought, if you don’t want me now, then you don’t want me later, so I’m not going to come in and read again. So then it became a little bit of a game. I think some tape was sent over or something and then they were desperate to have me and it became, "Well, I’m not so sure I want to be in your film." (laughs). And then they worked everything out. By that time that they wanted me, I had another job, so they had to work me in between these two jobs that I had. But they did and they did really well. Eden was the best about scheduling. And I wanted to do it anything. So that’s basically how it happened.
CHRIS NEUMER: And they just didn’t want you because they thought you were too dark?
SCOTT COHEN: They thought I was too dark, yeah. I mean, I think, I’ve never really talked to them about it, you know what I mean? Most of my stuff that I had done prior to that, in terms of real stuff was very dark and very heavy and I think they were looking for someone who was a little bit more–lighter. Personally, I think it worked out well. I think it worked out well. I hope it worked out well.
CHRIS NEUMER: I agree. Now I know you’ve done a lot of work in shows shot in and around NY, like NYPD Blue and–
SCOTT COHEN: NYPD Blue is shot in LA.
CHRIS NEUMER: Damn, and I know that. (pause) Okay, I take that back. It was just an attempt to segue to how New York played a part in this film.
SCOTT COHEN: In terms of me being a part of it or the film?
CHRIS NEUMER: The film itself.
SCOTT COHEN: You can’t do a film like this in any other city. To me it’s a very New York movie. The energy of this city is almost a character in the film. It’s a kind of speed and the kind of challenges that New Yorkers face everyday, you know, where you walk down the street and you have to basically negotiate walking across the street. I feel that that type of energy is what creates a character in this type of film. I think that it literally could happen in any major city, but those two women their voice is very New York, so I think they also created New York being a character in the film, which I think is brilliant because the backdrop of a film like this, the skyline and everything else that goes along with it.
CHRIS NEUMER: Could you expand a little bit on what makes New York a particular character, as opposed to say if this was a Chicago or San Francisco type of thing.
SCOTT COHEN: (Pauses).
CHRIS NEUMER: Is that making sense?
SCOTT COHEN: It’s making sense. It’s hard to say why, you know? New York is just New York, it’s a hard city, it’s a hard city to live in. It’s a desperate city, it’s filled with scam artists and people who are always looking for a way in and a way out and the majority of people have to really negotiate their way through that jungle to get to the other side and the other side being a place of tranquility and peace and home and safety and really in New York City you are negotiating every step you take on every block of New York City. To me that’s how it plays a part. I also think that these two women wrote it with New York in mind. They’re from New York so they wrote it with New York in mind which creates a vibe, a sensibility of it that you don’t get anywhere else. Does that make sense?
CHRIS NEUMER: That’s good. That’s what I’m looking for. I know it was a vague question.
SCOTT COHEN: It’s hard to say really why New York is that kind of place and why it plays that kind of part. I’m not sure really why, but it just does. On a really simple level, you put a camera up on a New York City rooftop and it’s historical, it’s kind of leading with story.
CHRIS NEUMER: And the city is filled with people who don’t have to drive to the next block.
SCOTT COHEN: And I think also you find you have a single person in a city like this where they are looking for a person to match them–a soul mate–in New York City, that’s like saying "Okay, I’m going to find a soul mate and I’m going to find a soul mate." It’s the same thing with New York City, you’re like, "Where the Hell am I going to find somebody like that?" You don’t know where to find somebody like that because everybody is on their own. It’s a crazy city.
CHRIS NEUMER: It’s funny you say that because–
SCOTT COHEN: Are you from San Francisco?
CHRIS NEUMER: Chicago.
SCOTT COHEN: Chicago. Obviously, Chicago is similar, but it would be different in Chicago.
CHRIS NEUMER: A little bit more laid back.
SCOTT COHEN: And colder.
CHRIS NEUMER: It’s funny you say that people are looking for someone, because that ties in very nicely with the plot of Kissing Jessica Stein. It explains why Jessica might be willing to take a jump that housewives in Iowa might now necessarily be willing to take.
SCOTT COHEN: No not at all. I also think that you don’t find people in every other city that are so concerned about their lipstick and that that is actually funny. People are honest about the most bizarre things, you know? People aren’t so keen on–it’s all image. New York is so image oriented, plus look at the businesses that these two women are in. That’s basically it.
CHRIS NEUMER: How did you approach the character of Josh, knowing that Jennifer and Heather were afraid that you were too dark? Was there a conscious effort to play him light and goofy?
SCOTT COHEN: I did not do that. I definitely did not change, I did it the way I wanted to do it and Charlie was extremely supportive of that. Charlie, I thought was, an absolutely brilliant director. For a first time director to be directing a feature like this, I thought it was like permanent. I thought it was unbelievable. He’s from New York and he is a person who is like--he’s the best of New York City. Charlie Wurmfeld. He is intelligent, sensitive, and he’s so supportive and spirited. You shoot an independent film in New York City and you’re facing a lot of problems and his sister too, she’s the same way. They got kicked out of locations and it was difficult, but never ever losing the sense of what to do. As for the character, I just did him the way I felt this should be done. I thought that he was–what was interesting about Josh was that he was really the transition. For a character, for the third character in the movie–you rarely find a character, a number three character, who’s going to have a beginning, middle and end. He’s usually a foil for somebody else. And he is a foil for the girls, but he’s much more. You saw him change, and for me you don’t really get that a lot in anything, TV or film. Even lead characters don’t really do that sometimes. But Josh had a real arc to him which was really interesting. What I tried to do was make him as prickish or prickly as possible in the beginning. What we saw in the end was tremendously different.
CHRIS NEUMER: What was tremendously different?
SCOTT COHEN: They were able to shoot whatever happens in the middle of that so that you can see the transition. I think we can see that but it’s for other people to judge. That’s how I approached it.
CHRIS NEUMER: I think that’s interesting because it allows people to put their own spin on how he changes during the middle of the script.
SCOTT COHEN: Right.
CHRIS NEUMER: let’s talk about the ending for a while here. This was such a hot topic of conversation. I remember the first time I saw it, I was like "Nooooo! End it with the Ella Fitzgerald song", not that I didn’t like the hole filled shirt you were wearing in the bookstore.
SCOTT COHEN: You didn’t like the end?
CHRIS NEUMER: No, I did. It just threw me. You’re watching this cute romantic comedy and they don’t end up together. The knee-jerk reaction is: they should have ended up together. Then two or three weeks later I was thinking, "That was a kick ass ending!"
SCOTT COHEN: To me the story wasn’t about romance. To me the story was about friendship. This is just to me. And to me it was about really finding out who you belong with. Whether that’s a man or a woman or a dog or a sheep or an elephant it doesn’t matter. To me, it’s about finding the one person you’re comfortable with and that you feel a connection with soulfully. That, to me, is what this movie is about. And that search for that in this story is what’s brilliant. Those two girls each wanted something different from each other , but what they found together is something that you never can replace. I think that is why the movie is as successful as it has been. For me the controversies.. is.. is..–it’s not meaningless, because I feel like there’s some controversy with the gay community feeling that they should have been together. I’ve heard that the gay community is upset because they didn’t end up together, kind of a weak look at–I don’t even know, I can’t put words in anyone’s mouth. But for me it’s not about the relationship of a woman and a woman or a man and a man, to me it’s about a relationship between two people and what they’ve found. Maybe that’s a little naïve, but to me, that’s what the story’s about.
CHRIS NEUMER: Sometimes the more simple approach to things is the more correct way. I know Ocham likes that line of reasoning.
SCOTT COHEN: I don’t think that it’s appropriate for this movie. I don’t think it’s appropriate to look at it in terms of ‘she should be with a woman,’ ‘she shouldn’t be with a man’, my personal opinion is that they don’t really end up together. My opinion is that they might try it for a while, but it doesn’t really work. What she has learned is something that–she has learned to move on with her life and what he has learned is that he will be able to move on with his life. And hopefully Helen has learned something to move on with her life. She needs to have sex in her life and that’s what she needs. She’s the most honest person in the movie. That’s who she is. Everybody walks to a different drummer.
CHRIS NEUMER: And this is a question about minutia, but was it a conscious choice for you to be wearing that shirt that was filled with holes in the bookstore?
SCOTT COHEN: Have you talked to anybody yet?
CHRIS NEUMER: Larry and Heather and Jennifer.
SCOTT COHEN: You’ve got to talk to Charlie. He’s a great conversation. He’ll tell you a lot. That scene was shot post the shooting of the film,. That scene was shot in LA.. They actually called me one day and said, "What are you doing this weekend?" I said, "I happen to be LA." They were like, "We’re shooting in LA," I said, "What are you doing shooting in LA?" So they were re-shooting the end of the movie and that shirt was the one shirt that somebody had. So they put it on me. The idea was to create a sense of poverty. That was really it. I think the whole thing was to create a sense of he has no more money, he’s writing, he’s down at the bookstore, but he’s happy! The guy is happy! He’s much happier now than he’s ever been.
CHRIS NEUMER: Was the original ending more–
SCOTT COHEN: The original ending was that we were on the stoop of my apartment. We weren’t quite sure but it looked like she was coming to my apartment to see me. I think that they felt that that was too hitting it on the head. They wanted it to be more just running into the person and there’s no definitive "This is what’s going to happen," but rather "this might happen". That was the idea. I have no idea if it was Fox’s idea or–no, no, no it couldn’t have been Fox’s idea because they didn’t have the movie yet.
CHRIS NEUMER: I’ve heard several different rumors about that, but nothing that has been confirmed of yet.
SCOTT COHEN: I don’t really know what the truth is because I never really–that’s my idea there. I don’t think it’s a big secret, although it might. They might have lost the film, I have no idea.
CHRIS NEUMER: When I was speaking to Larry he’d said that there was no extra ending that was shot, so we’ll see what more develops.
SCOTT COHEN: I don’t think it was an extra ending, I think they shot an ending and just weren’t happy with it. Maybe they are trying to keep it a secret and I just gave it away.
CHRIS NEUMER: I don’t think they are because there’s an alternate ending coming out on the DVD.
SCOTT COHEN: It’s not a big deal. They shot it one way and weren’t happy with it. And I think it was a weak ending. It really was. It was an ending ending and it was weak. It was boring. This ending was… this ending you just weren’t as sure what was going on.
CHRIS NEUMER: You had mentioned that you guys had gotten kicked out of some locations…
SCOTT COHEN: Yeah, they were kicked out of, I think, the Bureau wine location, which was the wedding scene location.
CHRIS NEUMER: Okay.
SCOTT COHEN: I came up to shoot that day and they couldn’t shoot because some nasty New York was saying, "I want you out of here! I hate huge film things."
CHRIS NEUMER: The spirit of the city.
SCOTT COHEN: Yes. And I do think they had trouble with other places too… besides me getting arrested in Connecticut. That was their worst nightmare I think.
CHRIS NEUMER: You got arrested in Connecticut?
SCOTT COHEN: We were shooting in Connecticut for all the scenes for Jennifer and Tovah’s house.
CHRIS NEUMER: The Scarsdale house?
SCOTT COHEN: The Scarsdale house, right. We stayed in this motel that was next to this highway. I woke up early one morning to get some coffee across the highway at this little deli. As I walked into the deli some cop stopped me and he put handcuffs on me, stuffed me into his car and brought me back up to the motel and told me that I was under arrest for robbing delis in the area. So I was in handcuffs in my motel room with cops–there was another cop who was hiding out somewhere–then an hour waiting for a detective to come. Meanwhile telling them that I’m actor from New York and they’re like, "Yeah, yeah, sure. What’s an actor from New York doing up in Connecticut? Shooting a movie?" I’m trying to tell them I was on NYPD Blue, I did this, I did that and then finally the detective came with a picture of the guy who had been doing all the things, which looked nothing like me except for the fact that I had a white T-shirt on and this guy had a white T-shirt on. So the detective was like, "Let him go, let him go, I don’t think he’s the guy." It was hysterical. Hysterical but frightening at the same time. They had to call production, but production wasn’t in because it was really early in the morning and we had finished late the night before, so they couldn’t get through to anyone and I was like–it was so fucked up.
CHRIS NEUMER: You don’t really think of you as being a real troublemaker on the set, but I guess I was wrong.
SCOTT COHEN: I know! That’s what I was thinking, but I was unshaven and had long hair and was wearing Adidas sweat pants with a white T-shirt walking across the highway.
CHRIS NEUMER: All the better to run in after you rob the deli.
SCOTT COHEN: Very funny. Very funny.
CHRIS NEUMER: Are there any other interesting little stories like that? Things that happened on set like that?
SCOTT COHEN: That was the most interesting one for me, but I’m sure that there were other ones happening to other people though. One of the greatest things that happened was that we shot in Central Park in a building that no one has ever shot in before. The whole roof scene, that whole scene was shot in a building that no one else was ever allowed to shoot in. I think there was a connection that Jennifer had with somebody she knew. I thought that was incredible because the view from that building was incredible. It was just gorgeous. The great New York city stories of independent filmmaking of dressing up a street, having a van to put some clothes on in, you’re doing something that you know is coming out of people’s hearts. And it’s like who cares about that? I could be naked and running around New York City for all I care, it's just fun like this.
CHRIS NEUMER: I think the passion and heart behind the project allowed it to come off as well as it did.
SCOTT COHEN: I think so too. I hope they write again together soon. I don’t know whether they get along or not or are willing to write together again, I haven’t really talked to them, but I hope they do. They work so well with each other, as actresses and as writers. I would try to change a word or a sentence and it was hysterical. I would try to change something and first I would hear from Jennifer, I would hear this tirade over why not. And then I would hear from Heather. By the time it got to Heather, I didn’t even want to change it anymore. Between two women hitting you with the information on why you shouldn’t change it, it’s like, "Okay, whatever!" I had no strength, I couldn’t do it. It was funny.
CHRIS NEUMER: So they had a unified vision
SCOTT COHEN: Extremely unified vision.
