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Starring: Mary-Kate Olsen, Ashley Olsen, Andy Richter, Jared Padalecki, Riley Smith, Andrea Martin
Directed by: Dennie Gordon
Screenplay by: Emily Fox, Adam Cooper
Release Date: May 7th, 2004
MPAA Rating: PG for mild sensuality and thematic elements.
Box Office: $14,071,441 (US total)
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures
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Today is the biggest day in the super-organized life of uptight overachiever Jane Ryan (Ashley Olsen). She’s due to give a major speech at Columbia University for a competition to win a prestigious scholarship to Oxford University. Meanwhile, her rebellious sister Roxy (Mary-Kate Olsen) is planning to ditch school and go backstage at a Simple Plan music video shoot in Manhattan, where she’ll slip her demo tape to the band’s A & R team.
Despite having so little in common and so much emotional distance between them, the adversarial sisters reluctantly journey together to the Big Apple, but their plans go wildly awry when a mix-up involving Jane’s all-important dayplanner lands them in the middle of a shady black market music piracy scheme. Sidetracked, sideswiped and hotly pursued from Chinatown to Harlem by whacked-out truancy officer (Eugene Levy) and a wannabe gangster (Andy Richter), Jane and Roxy reluctantly join forces and find unexpected romance with a charming Senator’s son (Jared Padalecki) and a handsome bike messenger (Riley Smith).
If Jane doesn’t recover her dayplanner – and the crucial speech inside it – she can kiss her college scholarship goodbye. If Lomax finally catches up with Roxy, she’ll be drummed out of high school for good. Roxy and Jane seem to have everything going against them…but anything can change in a New York Minute!
Seventeen & The City
Actresses, producers and international business entrepreneurs, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have entertained audiences around the world for their entire lives, ever since making their television debut at the age of nine months on the beloved television series Full House. After building remarkable careers as the executive producer-stars of a wildly successful home video series with nearly forty million units sold, as well as launching the mary-kateandashley brand, including a popular fashion and lifestyle products line, children’s book collection and videogame franchise, which will collectively gross over $1 billion at retail this year, Mary-Kate and Ashley bring their talents to the action comedy New York Minute, their coming-of-age theatrical film debut.
“Mary-Kate and Ashley have the potential to become very formidable comediennes,” says producer Denise Di Novi, whose array of hit films include A Walk to Remember, Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands and Heathers. “Their lifetime of experience has allowed them to really hone their comedic and dramatic skills. They’ve got great instincts and timing.”
Di Novi and her company, Di Novi Pictures, partnered with Mary-Kate and Ashley’s Dualstar Productions to develop an action comedy for the talented actresses. “We were looking for the right project for Mary-Kate and Ashley to transition from direct-to-video projects to theatrical features,” says producer Robert Thorne, CEO of Dualstar Entertainment Group, the corporate umbrella for Mary-Kate and Ashley and the mary-kateandashley brand. “We found a great story that we could develop for them.” “We thought it would be cool to do an After Hours kind of caper with two young women alone in the city, completely thrown in the midst of chaos as strange events unfold around them,” executive producer Alison Greenspan elaborates.
The collaboration yielded New York Minute, the story of Jane and Roxy Ryan, “two very different sisters who get caught up in a surreal chain of events,” Thorne describes, “but they find a way to triumph by bridging their differences – which turn out not to be so great as either of them imagine.”
“The script had everything we wanted in our first film – action, comedy and heart,” enthuses Mary-Kate. The Ryan sisters’ strained relationship is put to the test by the escalating events they face throughout their tumultuous day. “Basically, everything that can go wrong does go wrong,” Ashley says. “As wacky as the story gets, the humor and the characters are really relatable to everyone.”
To bring the screenplay’s vibrant blend of comedy, action and adventure to life, the producers turned to Emmy-winning television and feature film director Dennie Gordon, who has helmed acclaimed episodes of The Practice, Ally McBeal, Sports Night and HBO’s Tracey Takes On… “Dennie has a great eye, and she’s an actor’s director,” observes Di Novi, who previously collaborated with Gordon on the hit romantic comedy What a Girl Wants. “She knows how to draw wonderful performances from her cast, and make them shine across the spectrum from comedy to drama.”
“Dennie came in with storyboards, great ideas and this amazing energy,” Ashley recalls. “She was a perfect fit with us.” “She really got the script, and shared our vision for the movie,” adds Mary-Kate. “We have a strong, open relationship, and that’s what you need in a director.”
“Like the characters they play, Mary-Kate and Ashley are sophisticated young women, but at the same time, they can still giggle like girls,” Gordon observes. “New York Minute captures the spirit and intensity of this time in their own lives, and New York is the backdrop for their coming of age."
About The Story & Characters
Jane and Roxy Ryan are twin sisters with radically different approaches to life. Freewheelin’ Roxy and compulsively organized Jane have always danced to the beat of different drummers, but ever since their mother died when they were ten years old, the Ryan sisters have drifted farther and farther apart. “Their relationship is strained,” Mary-Kate says. “They believe they’re just so different that there’s no point in even trying to be close.”
“When Jane and Roxy try to have a conversation,” says Ashley, “there’s an awkwardness between them because they’ve lost their connection over the years.”
Their father, Dr. Ryan, played by Dr. Drew Pinksy of the popular syndicated radio show Loveline, can barely find enough hours in the day to run his busy medical practice, let alone find a way to bridge the distance between his estranged daughters. Meanwhile, Jane has assumed the role of family caretaker. “Jane thinks that she needs to take her mom’s place,” Ashley explains. “On top of being an obsessive overachiever, Jane has a seriously over-developed sense of responsibility. So she cooks and schedules and tries to nurture Roxy and her dad in her motherly way. Jane is totally driven, but she really admires Roxy’s ‘whatever’ attitude, even though it’s hard for her to admit.”
While Jane has turned into Miss Responsible, rebellious Roxy has become a legend in her Long Island school district for ditching class more often – and with more style – than any other student.
“Roxy’s laid back and very smart, but doesn’t like to use her smarts in school, because it’s more fun for her to play games with the truancy officer,” Mary-Kate says of her streetwise character, who blows off school to play the drums and pursue her dream of touring with her rock band. “Roxy goes through life taking each adventure as it comes and making the best of every situation. She’s cool and unconventional, but she’s a lot more like Jane than she seems, and she’s much more sensitive than her attitude lets on.” Deciding who would play which role came naturally to the sisters. “You don’t really ever see someone my age play an uptight, high strung person, and I thought Jane would be fun for me to portray,” Ashley says. “People may perceive Mary-Kate as being more laid back and me as being a little more tightly-wound than she is, which is not completely true, but it’s fun to play off of each other that way and it works really well in the film.”
“This project gave us a chance to play really exaggerated versions of our own personalities,” says Mary-Kate. “Although I don’t have a tattoo or play the drums like Roxy, I like to be spontaneous and live in the moment.”
On the day in question, both Jane and Roxy are looking to take it to the limit in the Big Apple, where Jane is due to give an economics speech at a competition for a prestigious scholarship to Oxford University. Meanwhile, Roxy’s planning to sneak backstage at a Simple Plan music video shoot and slip her demo CD to the band’s A&R executives.
But first, they’ll have to get past Max Lomax, Nassau County’s most fiercely dedicated truant officer. The ever-elusive Roxy is number one on this wannabe cop’s Most Wanted list, and her upstanding sister is nothing but an accomplice in his highly-trained eyes. “Lomax has a tragic history of trying to get onboard the New York City police department and never being able to, so he got into the truancy business,” says Eugene Levy, star of the blockbuster American Pie trilogy and the improvisational satires A Mighty Wind, Best In Show and Waiting for Guffman.
Sharing Levy’s penchant for character detail, Gordon bonded with the versatile actor when she described the pitiful, rusted-out police car she was creating for Lomax to drive. “Dennie has a great sense of fun and she is totally willing to go with ideas that you come up with, even at the last second,” says Levy, who took inspiration for his overzealous character from Don Knotts’ portrayal of bumbling deputy Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show. “Barney Fife is one of the great characters ever created for comedy. I thought it was funny to have a little Barney Fife in Lomax, a guy who thinks he’s really good at what he does. He’s a bit cocky, he’s the best in the business, but he’s not a real cop.”
“Working with Eugene has been amazing,” Ashley says. “It’s been so fun to watch and learn from him. He’s a true professional.”
“Eugene was on our wish list, and we were lucky enough to get him and so many of the actors we had in mind when we were developing the script,” Mary-Kate attests.
Hot on Roxy’s tail, Lomax busts a pool party in progress at her manager Justin’s house, and presses him for the 411 on her whereabouts. The savvy young manager is played by Jack Osbourne of MTV’s The Osbournes.
“Including my grandfather, my family has worked in the music industry for five generations, so playing the manager of a band was a real kick for me,” Osbourne says. “But I was completely blown away when I found out I’d be working with Eugene Levy. I loved him in American Pie and pretty much everything I’ve ever seen him in.”
“Working with that kid was a kick,” Levy says of Osbourne. “I didn’t know what to expect, honestly. I thought the language would be flying left, right and center. But he’s really sweet. He kept breaking up when we were doing our scene. In the middle of a take, he would just start laughing, which was really refreshing.”
As Lomax deduces that Roxy has ditched class to attend the Simple Plan music video shoot, the Ryan sisters board a Manhattan-bound commuter train. Jane practices her speech from meticulously-prepared notecards that she keeps in her precious dayplanner, in which she schedules her entire life in fifteen minute increments.
But Roxy’s hyperactive streak distracts Jane, and their sparring causes serious hot coffee damage to Hudson McGill, an executive who has the misfortune of sitting between the squabbling sisters. Saturday Night Live veteran Darrell Hammond plays McGill, the java-stained exec whose scalding encounter with the Ryans is the beginning of a not-so-beautiful relationship. “It’s very unpleasant for everyone involved,” Hammond confirms. “To McGill, these girls are like a perfect storm of bad luck.”
When Roxy’s failed attempt to evade the conductor at ticket time gets them both kicked off the train, Jane collides with Jim, a handsome bike messenger bound for the city. “In the middle of all this chaos, they have this instant chemistry,” says Riley Smith, known to audiences for his recurring role on the hit TV series 24 and his turn in the Cuba Gooding Jr. football drama Radio.
“Jane develops a crush on Jim just by looking into his gorgeous blue eyes,” Ashley says.
To make it up to Jane after being booted off the train, Roxy scores them a free ride to the city from limo driver Bennie Bang, unaware that this gangster crony has just slipped a computer chip containing millions of dollars worth of pirated music into her bag in an attempt to evade the Feds. Bennie works for his adoptive Chinese mother, Ma Bang, who runs a music pirating ring out of her nail salon in Chinatown, and he’s bent on getting that chip back.
“Bennie’s not really Chinese, but he thinks he is, so he speaks with a Chinese accent,” says Andy Richter, star of the comedy Big Trouble and the former co-host of Late Night with Conan O’Brien. “It’s fun to play a villain because you get to say things like ‘I’ve got your boyfriend,’ and ‘I’ll kill you,’ which you don’t get to say when you’re playing Florence Nightingale.”
The role of Ma Bang’s #1 Adopted Son required Richter to speak a few phrases in Mandarin Chinese. “I learned it phonetically,” he reveals. “I couldn’t retain it for more than five minutes because I wasn’t really sure what I was saying.”
“Whether he was speaking Chinese or with a Chinese accent, anything that came out of Andy’s mouth was funny,” Ashley attests.
After Bennie chauffeurs Jane and Roxy into the city and they get wise to his shady vibe, they dispatch the driver with some martial arts handiwork…only to get doused by a Slurpee and soaked by a car cruising through a mud puddle. To make matters way worse, Jane discovers that she has left her precious dayplanner – and her speech – in Bennie’s limo.
Roxy seizes the day and sneaks them into a hotel suite temporarily vacated by Senator Anne Baxter-Lipton, a powerful politico with a soft spot for her bizarre-looking lapdog, Reinaldo, a rare Chinese Crested. “After years of playing eccentric character roles, the chance to play an attractive senator with integrity really appealed to me,” says Andrea Martin, the Emmy-winning writer-actress who followed her successful run on the comedy series SCTV with hilarious performances in the films My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Wag the Dog. “I love that I have no costume changes and no leopard hats or glasses.”
“Andrea was hilarious,” Mary-Kate reports. “She made us laugh all the time, especially when she was doing her scenes with Reinaldo the dog.”
Roxy and Jane’s attempt at a quick clean-and-dash is disrupted by Trey, the Senator’s charming son, who gets a pleasant shock when he discovers the two beautiful young women – wearing nothing but a robe and a towel – crashing his mom’s hotel suite.
Naturally, Jane freaks out, but Roxy keeps her cool under pressure, making her all the more attractive to Trey. “He’s drawn to Roxy because they have similar attitudes,” suggests Jared Padalecki, a series regular on Gilmore Girls and a co-star of the blockbuster comedy Cheaper by the Dozen. “Trey’s not going to run his life by a schedule. He kind of lets life discover him, instead of trying force himself on life, and Roxy is the same way.”
All plans literally go out the window when the Senator unexpectedly returns to her room, and Reinaldo makes an unscheduled exit out onto the building’s precarious ledge. Trey distracts his mom while Roxy and Jane – and Reinaldo – make an exhilarating getaway via a window washing rig.
A dayplanner-for-chip exchange with Bennie at the Simple Plan music video shoot goes totally awry, and the girls narrowly escape Lomax with a well-timed stagedive into the mosh pit. After sloshing through a sewer main, they emerge in Harlem, just blocks from Columbia University, where Jane is supposed to deliver her speech in less than an hour.
The bedraggled duo duck into the House of Bling, and with a little assistance from Big Shirl and her posse, Jane and Roxy are ready to rock. “Big Shirl gives them blinged-out makeovers,” says Mary Bond Davis, star of Broadway’s hit musical Hairspray. “She’s just trying to help them have fun in life.”
Gordon, Mary-Kate and Ashley cast Davis in the film after seeing her roof-raising performance in Hairspray. “She completely blew us away,” says Gordon. “I set out to create a role for her as our hip-hop diva.”
With Lomax closing in, it looks like Roxy is one beat away from being expelled from high school. Meanwhile, Bennie kidnaps Jane and locks her inside Ma Bang’s nail salon while he tries to force Reinaldo, who has eaten the valuable computer chip, to relinquish it.
Will another chance encounter with Jim the bike messenger help Jane outwit Bennie in time to race 111 blocks uptown and give her speech to win the Oxford scholarship? Will Roxy think fast and save the day with a little help from Trey?
Anything can happen in a New York Minute, even for two estranged sisters who ultimately discover they have more in common than they ever imagined. “At first, Jane thinks that the whole day is about her making the perfect speech and winning the scholarship,” says Ashley. “On the way there, she realizes that she wants a lot of other things, too.”
“After spending the whole day together going through all of these disastrous situations, Roxy and Jane see sides of each other that they never knew about,” Mary-Kate concludes. “They realize that they genuinely like each other and decide to embrace their differences instead of being divided by them.”
About The Production
In addition to developing and starring in New York Minute, Mary-Kate and Ashley serve as the film’s producers alongside Denise Di Novi and Robert Thorne. “Mary-Kate and Ashley are very good at putting their acting aside and putting on their producer hats,” director Dennie Gordon notes. “Mary-Kate thinks like a director. She’s very sharp and sees the whole picture. Ashley will focus on small details with amazing instincts. From the beginning, they were both very clear about wanting to produce a sophisticated comedy, and we’ve all really worked hard as a team to fulfill their vision.”
The actresses were involved in nearly every facet of the production with Di Novi, Thorne and executive producer Alison Greenspan. “We’ve learned so much from them,” Mary-Kate raves. “We’ve given input on casting, locations, budget, music, editing, set design, wardrobe and more.”
“We have a lot of producing experience, but the scale of a picture like this is much bigger in every way than any of our previous projects,” says Ashley, who, along with Mary-Kate, had to complete three hours of school a day in addition to their producing and acting obligations. “So it’s been fun to be a part of such a great producing team.”
The challenges of filming a story that takes place in one day can be even more complex than shooting a period piece. “It was a constant exercise in matching and continuity,” Gordon acknowledges. “Before we filmed every scene, we asked ourselves ‘What time is it in the story? If it’s 10:22 a.m., then where were Jane and Roxy at 10:20? Where will they be at 10:30?’”
Gordon and director of photography Greg Gardiner used Digital Intermediate technology to balance the varying light quality from nine weeks of filming. (New York Minute has the distinction of being Warner Bros. Pictures’ first full-length live action feature to utilize the Digital Intermediate film process.)
“The Studio really supported me in going this route, so I could color match 47 days of different light and sky and progress the light from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on a single day,” Gordon explains. “It was also a thrilling opportunity to make the movie more eye-popping, color-wise. We’re doing some cool split-screens and fast-motion edits that couldn’t be done without Digital Intermediate – a process that it usually reserved for huge special effects films.”
To further underscore the tension of the escalating situations in which Jane and Roxy find themselves, Gardiner used natural light to “keep the look rich and stylish, yet real.”
During their whirlwind day in the city, Jane and Roxy make ten costume changes, from pajamas to I Love New York tourist outfits to four phat wardrobe changes each at the House of Bling (all of which were handmade).
New York is itself a character in the film, which Gordon wanted to depict as “a bright sparkling Emerald City” a là The Wizard of Oz. According to production designer Michael Carlin, who designed What A Girl Wants for Gordon, “The film is essentially a road movie, with Jane and Roxy traveling through our version of New York: a big, bright, glittery city, a place of aspiration. That world needed to be as light and bright as we could make it.”
The production filmed in numerous locations in and around New York and Toronto, including some of Manhattan’s most beloved landmarks like Times Square, Radio City Music Hall, Central Park, the Plaza Hotel, Columbia University, the Brooklyn Bridge, Harlem, the Flat Iron District, Tribeca, Chinatown and the NYC subway.
Mary-Kate and Ashley turned more than a few heads as they sprinted down 6th Avenue – clad only in a robe and a towel – and dashed across the street past Radio City Music Hall. Filming Max Lomax’s high-speed pursuit of Jane and Roxy from Harlem down Park Avenue to a crashing conclusion in Times Square also drew a great deal of attention from fans. “It seemed like every time we shot at an outdoor location, there were hundreds of people lined up behind barricades, with police and bodyguards and girls crying and passing out like Elvis just came to set,” Riley Smith recalls. “But Mary-Kate and Ashley just took it in stride and were very nonchalant about all the attention.”
“Mary-Kate and Ashley are consummate professionals,” Gordon affirms. “They’re incredibly focused, hardworking, and quick studies. You can throw something new at them and they’ll get it in a heartbeat. I’m especially proud of the range of performance I was able to draw from them, from physical comedy to heavy action to really nuanced, emotional moments. Audiences will be very surprised by their performances.”
“These young women could not be more down to earth and sweet,” Eugene Levy concurs. “They’re lovely, talented and really fun to work with.”
The producer-actresses believe that their years spent executive producing and starring in television and direct-to-video projects has given them an even greater appreciation of the luxuries afforded by feature productions. “In making our videos, we’d have to shoot eight to ten pages a day, sometimes more, and that can be really tough,” Mary-Kate says. “With New York Minute, we shot two to three pages a day and were able to spend more time developing our characters and making each scene as good as it could possibly be.”
“This feels like what our whole career has been leading up to,” Ashley adds with a smile.
Stunts & New Skills
Filming the whirlwind chain of events that propel Jane and Roxy Ryan through New York Minute required Mary-Kate and Ashley to acquire a few new skills for their roles. Mary-Kate learned how to play the drums and drive a stick shift, while Ashley learned how to speak a few words of Mandarin Chinese and spin a car 180 degrees in a sliding move known as “a Blues Brothers.”
The actresses also performed most of their own stunts, from freefalling on a window washing rig into a garbage dumpster, busting out some lethal karate kicks, and body surfing over a crowd of 500 extras. “Doing our own stunts has been pretty intense,” says Ashley, who admits she got a few bruises in the process. “This movie was very physical, which is something that we’ve never done before. It wasn’t so much scary as exciting. It’s fun learning new things.”
“I think of it like riding a roller coaster,” says Mary-Kate. “Doing stunts makes you feel like you’re doing something dangerous, even though you couldn’t be safer with the stunt team there to support you. We loved doing them.”
“They’re game for anything,” agrees stunt coordinator Melissa Stubbs, who choreographed and rehearsed maneuvers with stunt doubles, showed Mary-Kate and Ashley how the various sequences would play out, and then trained them to perform each action. “They pick things up so quickly and they’re so sure of themselves, they came through on every stunt with flying colors.”
For Jane and Roxy’s hand-to-hand combat with mafia lackey Bennie Bang in the subway, Stubbs taught Mary-Kate and Ashley how to deliver a Butterfly Kick, a powerful roundhouse blow that the Ryan sisters use to maximum effect on the tenacious limo driver. “I get kicked in the face by Mary-Kate, and I think kicked in the butt by Ashley,” Richter says of the subway fight. “I’m not sure whose foot it was, but I get pretty well beat up.”
“Andy came up with the idea that he should steal a cane from an old man and use it as a weapon in the fight,” Stubbs reveals. “We taught him a samurai sword and bow-staff routine where he grabs the cane and does some fancy twirling action. He picked it up right away.”
Mary-Kate also learned how to fight Filipino stick-style, using drum sticks. “She practiced and practiced spinning these sticks on her own time, and when we got there on the day, she was awesome,” says Ashley, who learned a few lines of Mandarin for the scene. (“I learned each syllable phonetically and memorized the phrases like a song,” she recounts.)
The filmmakers and Stubbs opted to stage the Ryans’ brawl with Bennie as a more realistic-based fight than choreographing it with stylistic Hong Kong wire work. However, Mary-Kate worked in a wire harness rig to execute a shot in which Roxy dives down a hotel hallway into Senator Anne Baxter-Lipton’s suite just as the door is closing. “It takes a certain amount of body control to make wire work look realistic,” says Stubbs, “and not like you’re letting the cables do all the work. Nailing the subtleties of that are difficult, but Mary-Kate did a great job.”
The actresses had some initial trepidation about shooting the sequence in which Roxy, Jane and Reinaldo the dog plummet 200 feet on a window washing rig and land in a dumpster. “We were really scared at first, because we were so high up and we didn’t know how fast we were going to drop,” Ashley remembers. “Then we dropped, and we were like, ‘That was lame! Go faster!’”
Another exhilarating stunt was called for during the dynamic Simple Plan video shoot, a climactic sequence that features Jane and Roxy stagediving into the mosh pit to escape the relentless Lomax. Stubbs taught Mary-Kate and Ashley, as well as director Dennie Gordon, how to perform a flawless stage dive, and Gordon took the first leap of faith on the day of filming.
“I had promised the girls I wouldn’t ask them to do anything I hadn’t done first,” Gordon says. “Everyone was so shocked when I took the first jump, especially me. But it was exhilarating. And Mary-Kate and Ashley went on to do dozens of dives. They were awesome and we had a blast.”
“I was a little nervous at first, just trusting that the crowd is going to catch you,” Ashley admits. “But it was really fun. The only problem was, I was wearing a skirt, so we had to tape the whole thing down!” Eugene Levy did his own stage dive as well, although he opted to land in a safety mat rather than surf the crowd. “It doesn’t sound scary, but jumping into a mat is scary,” Levy deadpans. “I have a fairly low key approach to comedy. The big physical stuff I leave to people who can actually do it well. So jumping off a stage into a big cushy mat was about as physical as I’ve been in quite a while.”
Can't Stop The Music
Music plays a major role in New York Minute, resonating throughout the story, and director Dennie Gordon made it a priority to bring music supervisor John Houlihan, known for his work on the sonically-driven Charlie’s Angels and Austin Powers film series, aboard to collaborate on the film’s high powered soundtrack.
Gordon and Houlihan were looking for a high-energy, alternative rock band to perform a song in the film’s pivotal music video/concert sequence, in which Roxy, Jane and relentless wannabe cop Max Lomax are literally swept away by the music and the rowdy crowd.
Enter Simple Plan, the Canadian punk pop band whose Platinum debut album, No Pads, No Helmets…Just Balls, produced the hit singles “I’d Do Anything” and “Addicted.” (The band was also nominated as Best New Artist at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards for their video for “Addicted.”) Fans of Simple Plan’s music, Mary-Kate and Ashley invited the group to make their feature film debut in New York Minute.
“They’re fun guys and they have a big following, so we thought it would be a cool idea to have them in the movie,” Mary-Kate says.
“The band has a lot of energy and their presence brings another great facet to the film,” Ashley concurs. The Simple Plan music video/concert sequence was shot over three days on a construction site in the center of Toronto’s financial district, where surrounding skyscrapers resemble a New York City-esque skyline. The band performed the song “Vacation,” an unreleased track from the recording sessions that produced their No Pads album.
The song underscores the strained relationship between Roxy and Jane. “‘Vacation’ is a song about someone who starts off being nice and fun to hang out with, and then becomes the most annoying person in the world,” reveals lead singer Pierre Bouvier. “Basically, it’s about someone you wouldn’t mind not seeing ever again.”
The band took a brief break from touring to film the raucous sequence. “It was rad to be in the movie because we got to do what we love the most: perform and have fun on stage,” Bouvier says. “It was awesome to be part of such a big production. There were cameras everywhere, all shooting at the same time. It was way more impressive than a normal music video set.”
Simple Plan was only too happy to spend some of their limited time off filming with Mary-Kate and Ashley. “It was awesome to meet Mary-Kate and Ashley,” Bouvier grins. “They’re like cultural icons. They were super nice to us.”
In addition to Simple Plan’s rollicking onscreen performance, “Vacation” is featured on the film’s soundtrack, along with the Sly & Robbie produced single “Curbside Prophet” from Jason Mraz, a smash remix of Elvis Presley’s “Rubberneckin’ (Oakenfold Mix),” a hard-rocking “Please Don’t Tease” from The Donnas and legendary New York rockers Blondie with “One Way or Another.” A soundtrack highlight to be sure is the cover of David Bowie’s classic hit “Suffragette City,” performed by the band Wakefield featuring Mary-Kate on drums and backing vocals.
It's A Dog-Eat-Chip World
Jane Ryan’s day takes a turn for the worse when she discovers that she’s left her all-important dayplanner in the limousine driven by the nefarious Bennie Bang. Worse turns to way worse when Bennie offers to trade her dayplanner for his computer chip…which is promptly eaten by Reinaldo, Senator Anne Baxter-Lipton’s odd-looking lapdog, a unique Chinese Crested.
Reinaldo serves as a key player in the story, and required the casting of a miniature canine who would not only look the part, but could withstand extensive handling by the cast and perform such stunts as diving into a mosh pit and jumping out a skyscraper window.
“I didn’t want cute and fuzzy, I wanted a sight-gag dog,” director Dennie Gordon recalls. “I wanted the smallest, funniest-looking dogs we could train. But over the course of filming, they really grew on me, and now I think they’re adorable.”
She’s referring to Krissy and Gala, the two Chinese Crested lapdogs who took turns portraying Reinaldo. This rare and unusual breed is hairless except for their feet, head and tail, which are covered with long, soft white fur. The rest of their bodies are mainly grey, with pink spotted underbellies.
“Chinese Crested dogs are really animated and they have a fun-loving disposition,” says animal wrangler Rick Parker, who trained and handled Gala and Krissy for New York Minute with his sister, Gail Parker. “They love to jump up into your bed, hide under the covers, give you kisses and lay on you to keep warm.”
Gala served as the “number one” Reinaldo, shooting approximately 70% of the character’s scenes, with the elder Krissy stepping in to handle the rest. This mother-daughter team have both been American and Canadian show champions, and Krissy has produced a number of Canadian champs. (“You can’t tell that Krissy is Gala’s mom, because they both use wonderful hair products, so they look like sisters,” Parker notes.)
In training these delicate dogs for their physically demanding role, the Parkers prepped Gala and Krissy to relax while being handled by several members of the ensemble cast, and to be comfortable while shooting the rowdy mosh pit action in the sprawling music video/concert sequence. “We practiced for the mosh pit scene by standing three feet apart and having Gala jump from one of us to the other,” Parker explains. “Then we took turns tossing her back and forth. For the actual shoot, we positioned some of our stunt people in the mosh pit so she would be familiar with everyone who handled her.”
Eugene Levy, a seasoned veteran of working with canines from his unforgettable turn in the dog competition satire Best In Show, developed a bond with Gala during the course of production. “Gala is really delightful and well-trained,” he says, “but working with her was a little odd because she has no fur, so every time I picked her up, I thought maybe I was being a little forward. Was I touching a wrong spot? But I got used to it. I think she liked me.”
The same cannot be said for Alannah Ong, who plays the villainous Ma Bang, the mafiosa determined to retrieve her computer chip from Reinaldo – at any cost. “I had to be very mean to Gala when I was in character,” Ong says. “So even when we weren’t filming, when she looked at me, she would recognize me and shiver!”
For the doggies’ more daunting and downright dangerous stunts, two animatronic Reinaldo replicas and two “stuffies” (stuffed animal versions of the character, each bearing a different look) were utilized. “Mary-Kate and Ashley were very conscientious about the dogs’ well-being, which we really appreciated,” Parker says. “Because of their delicate natures, if we were working outside, the dogs had to have some type of sun block on. If it was cold out, we had to put their clothes on to keep them warm."
 Production notes provided by Warner Bros. Pictures. |
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