Lauren Miller and Ari Graynor in the phone sex line comedy For a Good Time, Call… (Courtesy of Focus Features)
There’s a lot that’s odd about the new Focus Feature comedy For a Good Time, Call…
For starters, it only took 16 days to complete the feature and it was financed through the help of Lauren Miller’s (one of the lead actresses) brother’s work clients.
But perhaps the oddest aspect of For a Good Time, Call… is the story from which it’s rooted.
Based on the true events of screenwriter Katie Anne Naylon’s freshman year at Florida State University, For a Good Time, Call…follows two desperate New Yorkers who resort to starting a phone sex line to make ends meet.
With a story so laced with sexual overtones, For a Good Time, Call…is surprisingly grounded and is more about two friends falling in love with each other than a phone sex line.
That’s exactly what caught the film director Jamie Travis’ attention to the project.
“I had been doing my own thing in short film and had been reading a lot of scripts before I found this one,” the Canadian director said.
“When I read the story, I just fell in love. I said ‘This is what I’m looking for, this is what I want to film.'”
Travis was close to the last person on the project. The film’s stars, Ali Graynor and Lauren Miller, were already attached to the film before a director was found.
“Katy [Naylon] and I knew we wanted Ali [Graynor] in the movie,” Miller, who helped co write the film, said. “When we got her to sign on our next goal was finding a director. We were so happy when Travis said he’d do it. His short film work blew us away.”
Graynor had a big task on her hands portraying the woman who wrote the film and lived the story. However, once filming was over, Graynor claims that Naylon now calls her “on screen me.”
“It’s weird to play a person who is standing in the same room as you,” Graynor said. “But it was also really nice because I could ask her any questions I had for the role. Like ‘Does my voice sound sexier like this?'”
For a Good Time, Call… opens in theaters in Dallas this Friday. Read our review in Friday’s issue.
