After the sudden death of her fiancé, Gray Wheeler (Jennifer Garner) finds comfort in the company of his friends: lighthearted and comic Sam (Kevin Smith), hyper-responsible Dennis (Sam Jaeger), and, oddly enough, his old childhood buddy Fritz (Timothy Olyphant), an irresponsible playboy whom she’d previously pegged as one of the least reliable people in the world. As secrets about her supposedly perfect fiancé emerge, Gray comes to see new sides of the man she thought she knew, and at the same time, finds herself drawn to the last man she ever expected to fall for.
Gray Wheeler (Jennifer Garner) thought she had life all figured out: the perfect job, the perfect city (Boulder, Colorado), and best of all, Grady, the perfect fiancé. However, in life, nothing is perfect: the day that was supposed to be their wedding day instead becomes Grady’s funeral. At the memorial, Gray is comforted by Grady’s closest friends: cheerful Sam (Kevin Smith) and responsible Dennis (Sam Jaeger). When she leaves the reception for a few minutes alone, her private moment is interrupted as Grady’s childhood buddy from L.A., Fritz (Timothy Olyphant), bursts in and, thinking the room is empty, seduces the event caterer. Gray, justifiably piqued, blurts, “How could he have been friends with you? You’re everything he hated.
After the memorial, Gray realizes that she can no longer afford the house she and Grady rented. Sam and Dennis take her in, feeling a responsibility to take care of their pal’s fiancé… but to Gray’s chagrin, she finds that the boys have also offered a bed to Fritz. As Gray closes Grady’s accounts, she finds one she never knew existed: a large one – containing about a million dollars. Grady was loaded… but that wasn’t the only secret Grady kept from his fiancé. He was also sending the interest on that account – $3,000 a month – to a woman in L.A. Gray manages to pull the details out of Fritz: Grady had a one-time affair, before he met Gray, with a massage therapist named Maureen. The result of that one night, says Fritz, is a seven-year-old boy named Mattie. Gray is devastated to learn that Grady never trusted her enough to tell her about his son.
While Gray struggles to come to terms with this new information about the man she loved, relationships in the house become strained, as both Sam and Dennis take refuge in their vices in order to cope with the loss. Sam eats and drinks too much, missing time at work, while workaholic Dennis pours an unhealthy amount of energy into creating a Peace Garden for Grady.
Further complicating matters, Maureen shows up in Boulder with three-and-a-half-year-old Mattie – not the seven-year-old that Fritz said he’d be. Gray pieces together the truth: Grady slept with Maureen several times while he was seeing Gray. Gray feels deceived, not only by Grady, who cheated on her, but also by Fritz – though she appreciates that he would try to protect her from the news. Despite the confusion and anger, they all want to get to know Grady’s son… and with that, the house adds two more.
Despite the fact that he kept such an important secret from her – or maybe because he protected her from it so well – Gray is confused to find her feelings for Fritz growing stronger… and that night, she begins a secret affair with him, creeping back into her own room before her roommates catch her. Bewildered and freaked out by what she’s done, Gray is left to sort out her desires and fears alone.
As tensions between everyone in the house grow, Dennis lets it slip that he has been in love with Gray… but as Gray doesn’t return his affections, Dennis is left humiliated – and with only his work on the Peace Garden to turn to for solace. Meanwhile, Gray continues to keep her affair with Fritz a secret and struggles to admit that he knew her fiancé better than she did.
Though the days since Grady’s death have not been easy, all those who loved him learn to come to terms in their own ways. Sam begins a relationship with Maureen, becoming an unlikely but stable rock for the single mother. Dennis, proud of what he’s built in the Peace Garden, finds solace after all. And Gray learns to accept that Grady was not the perfect man she thought he was, that Fritz is not the self-centered playboy she thought he was, and that life is not something to be planned, but caught as it comes.
About the Film
“The tone of this film is unusual, because it isn’t a drama and it isn’t a comedy, but to me, that’s what life is – a lot of both. You know the old saying: tragedy plus time equals comedy,” says Susannah Grant, writer-director of the new Columbia Pictures film Catch and Release. Grant has been hailed for finding the comedic elements of life’s drama – and vice versa – in such films as In Her Shoes, 28 Days, and Erin Brockovich, for which she was rewarded with an Academy Award nomination.
Jennifer Garner, who takes on the lead role of Gray Wheeler, agrees that managing the fine line between comedy and drama required a balancing act. “You try to be as honest as you can in any given moment – not go too heavy in either direction. It’s like you’re with a girlfriend; she’s freaking out one minute, and the next, you’re both laughing hysterically.”
According to producer Jenno Topping, Garner became an influential and important voice in the creative process from the very beginning. “Jennifer was attached very early,” she says. “There are few actresses who could play this part, handling the shifts between humor and drama, often within the same scene.”
The project began when a few ideas merged in Grant’s mind. “I was intrigued by the idea that the worst thing that could happen to someone would become the thing that saves her life, the thing that moves her to a greater sense of existence,” she says. As that idea was brewing, a friend related to her a story: while attending a funeral for a friend of his who had died, he had seen the widow being comforted by her husband’s male friends. From these two germs, Grant created the story of Gray Wheeler, played in the film by Jennifer Garner, who comes to terms with the sudden passing of her fiancé, Grady, the glue that held together their mutual friends. Now that he’s gone, long-held secrets, skeletons, and resentments come to the fore… with comedic results.
“Gray suddenly realizes that she no longer has her boyfriend there to buffer her relationships with their mutual friends,” says Garner. “Everything each of them has held inside starts to bubble up. Sam begins to drink and skips out of work. Dennis reveals he has a crush on her. And then there’s Fritz, Grady’s childhood friend, who doesn’t fit in with the others, but turns out to know who Grady really was better than any of them.
“All the relationships end up shifting in the wake of Grady’s death,” says Grant. “They struggle comedically with this shift. Nobody goes into these kinds of life changes willingly – we’re always dragged into them, kicking and screaming. By the end of the film, they’re on a richer level of existence.”
Catch and Release marks Grant’s debut as writer-director; though she had been intimately involved with several successful films as a screenwriter, the time and project were right for her to make the leap behind the camera. “There’s a natural completion to the story process when you direct,” says Grant. “I didn’t write it intending to direct, but once I finished it, I thought, ‘This is one that I want to carry all the way through.’
Acknowledging the collaborative nature of filmmaking, Grant explains, “Every original script comes from a place important to you. As a writer, you make the script exactly what you want it to be – there are questions and ideas in it that you care about. When producers and directors come on board, some of those ideas get taken out for questions and ideas that are important to them. I didn’t want that to happen with this script.”
Grant says that from the first moment, Topping became the film’s best and fiercest advocate. Catch and Release marks only the latest collaboration between the professional colleagues and personal friends. “Our husbands know each other, our kids play together,” she says. “Of course, working together meant we were suddenly spending a lot more time together… Jenno is a great defender of a project. I think I know only about 30% of what she did for me; the rest were challenges she dealt with before they became a problem.
Topping says that Grant chose an especially rewarding film with which to make her directorial debut. “The tone is one of the strongest assets of this film,” says the veteran producer. “It’s a very ephemeral, sensitive, fragile tone, with comedic and dramatic moments happening right up against one another. Of course, that’s what life is – just when you’re least expecting to laugh at anything, it all comes crashing in on you.”
As a writer-director himself, Kevin Smith (who takes on his first major acting role in a film in Catch and Release) has high praise for Grant, noting that she was an invaluable resource on the set. “I have a great deal of respect for someone who is directing her own material, because she is so close to the material,” he says.
“It was great having the writer on set – I could turn to Susannah and say, ‘How do you want me to say this? Hey, can we try something different?’ Having the writer there was beautiful because she was able to tell us the exact inflection she had in her head when she was writing the words.
Adds Timothy Olyphant, who plays Fritz: “I think it’s fantastic to work on something when there is only one chef in the kitchen. In the course of filming, as scenes came to life, she was able to make the adjustments she couldn’t have anticipated.”
Jennifer Garner echoes those sentiments: “Susannah’s transition from writer to director was seamless. I was amazed at her stillness as a director. She was so calm and in such command of what she wanted from each scene.”
Grant says that the best thing she did as the director of Catch and Release was to surround herself with talented people. “Everyone brings something that makes the film richer,” she says, “and I enjoyed watching people bring everything they can.” That was the best lesson, she says – learning when to let go of some of her original intentions in favor of a new idea, no matter how it comes about.
Like the character she created for Garner, Grant’s experience directing the film was one of catch and release. “I didn’t really know what to expect, except that it was going to be demanding in ways I hadn’t experienced before. But then, right before we started shooting, I ran into a director on an airplane – a man who has directed a lot of movies,” remembers Grant. “We got to chatting and he said, ‘It’s hard to remember this, but you must have fun.’ That stayed in my brain, and because I was surrounded by people who kept the same thing in mind, it was fun. There were pressures and ticking clocks, of course, but some days, I couldn’t believe how much fun I was having.”
Heading up the cast of Catch and Release as Gray is Jennifer Garner. For firsttime director Susannah Grant, it was immediately clear that the role was in the right hands. “As soon as you hire an actor, the part is all theirs. You’ve done your job and now it belongs to them,” says Grant. “Jennifer created an entire backstory for Gray. She met all my hopes for the part – she’s so good, so funny, so moving; she worked so hard, yet you don’t see an ounce of the effort. Her performance is simply beautiful.”
“As an actress, Jennifer is able to make herself available emotionally and comedically – your heart breaks for her,” says Topping. “She has an incredible ability to make you both empathetic and sympathetic for her character as her world is opened up.”
According to Garner, before Gray can move on, she first has to come to terms with the man her fiancé really was – not the man she thought he was. “Bit by bit, she loses the idea of who he was – and she can’t even be mad at him, because he’s gone,” she says. “So even though she misses him terribly, she’s at sixes and sevens with herself over it.”
“Jennifer had a clear understanding of who Gray is from the get-go,” says Grant. “She does something invisible that holds the movie together: though all the other characters have their showy moments, it’s Jennifer’s performance – even when she’s being funny – that reminds you of why they’re all together.”
“I loved the idea that Gray was being taken care of by her fiancé’s best friends,” Garner says. “It’s just like real life: whenever I’ve been in a relationship, I’ve grown to love their friends so much – I’ve always loved being the girl among the guys.”
Indeed, because Catch and Release is as much about the people around Gray as it is about Gray herself, the filmmakers took care to make sure that each role was cast with just the right actor. “Casting is like getting married,” says Grant. “You’re not going to do it with someone who’s almost right.”
Just right for the role of Fritz, Grady’s playboy friend from childhood and keeper of his secrets, is Timothy Olyphant, who currently stars as Marshal Seth Bullock on HBO’s “Deadwood.” “I like complicated characters,” says the actor. “It’s always fun when you have a number of different angles. It frees you up to try different things from moment to moment.”
“Fritz shows up in Boulder – this small town – from L.A. and doesn’t fit in, but never leaves,” says Olyphant. “He consistently does the wrong thing, but seems oblivious to how others see him. Still, as Gray learns more about her fiancé, she learns more about Fritz as well.”
For the role of Sam, Gray’s sarcastic but lighthearted friend who earns his keep by compiling inspirational quotes for boxes of herbal tea, the filmmakers were struck by a creative suggestion. “One night in bed, I was kvetching about casting and my husband said, ‘Enough. Describe to me who you are looking for.’ So I went through a whole list and he said, ‘What about Kevin Smith?’ Kevin happens to be a friend of ours. I said, ‘I never thought of that. You’re absolutely right. It has to be Kevin.’”
When Topping approached him, Smith was taken aback. “One day, Jenno called me and asked if I’d be interested in acting in a movie. My first thought was, “Where’s Kutcher? Am I being punk’d?’”
Though Smith has appeared in six of his own movies (as the mostly mute Silent Bob) and in a handful of cameo performances, Catch and Release marks his first major role in a motion picture. “I fell in love with the part right away – it was like putting on a glove. I thought, ‘Oh, I can do this,’” he says. “I get to make all the jokes. Garner and Olyphant have to make out and look all sexy; I come in and crack wise. Suddenly, I’m a legitimate actor, not just one that doesn’t talk in his own movie.”
Grant couldn’t have been happier when Smith walked through the door. “We had seen many good actors and even gone to England in our search,” she remembers. “Then, Kevin auditioned and we called his agents immediately. Kevin didn’t even have a chance to make it all the way home before he had to turn his car around and drive back to our office.”
For the role of Dennis, the filmmakers were equally certain that they had found their man. “Sam Jaeger came in and I just knew he was the guy – no question about it,” says Grant. “I couldn’t quite figure out whether he was actually like the character or a really, really good actor. I finally realized that it was a bit of both. There are elements of Dennis’ personality in Sam, but more importantly, he’s a terrific actor, incredibly subtle.”
“We fell in love with Sam instantly,” says Topping. “You don’t want to miss a second of his performance, because you think you’re going to miss some flicker of emotion. Also, his dry sense of humor is the perfect balance to Kevin Smith’s character – they’re the odd couple.”
Dennis’ approach is: “Pick up the pieces and keep moving in the hope that the hurt will pass,” says Jaeger. “It’s a testament to the nuances in Susannah’s writing that we perceive the differences in the characters and how they deal with Grady’s passing – the ways in which they connect and also the ways in which they don’t connect.”
The woman with whom Grady had an affair, Maureen, played by Juliette Lewis, is experiencing her own sense of loss. “There is no black and white in this story, no all out good and bad,” explains Lewis. “Maureen isn’t the bad girl or the mistress; she has a good heart. She’s a single mom who has to get up every morning and move forward because she has a child to raise.”
Grant says that Juliette Lewis was the first and only actor that came to mind when she began to think about who could bring Maureen to life. “I never write with individual actors in mind, but when I’d finished the script, I knew right away that Juliette was the only one who would be perfect for the part,” says the writerdirector. “She came in and read, and just like I thought she would be, she was perfect.”
“Juliette is the most remarkable creative artist,” Grant continues. “She is completely focused and completely free at the same time – she finds that balance.”
“How great is Juliette Lewis?” enthuses Garner. “This is a character unlike any she’s played before, which is saying something, because she always plays such interesting roles. Juliette plays it with such heart. Maureen’s not there to get in anybody’s way; she’s there because she’s trying to do the right thing for her son and because, like everyone else, she misses Grady.”
* * *
Almost as important as casting the actors was finding the perfect location; Boulder, Colorado became integral to the story. Topping explains, “Susannah had spent a lot of time in Boulder – her sister lives there. It epitomizes a town in which time can stand still; it’s a college town and many people stay here after graduation, living the post-collegiate life in perpetuity. You can go running and kayaking and hang out with your friends. It’s a really good life – it’s easy not to move on after college, not to grow up. It is the perfect setting for this group of people who are stuck in their lives.”
Grant adds, “One thing I really wanted to do was create a world that was a bit of a bubble. College towns are like that – it’s very easy to resist maturity. Boulder was a wonderful town for that.”
The city of Boulder also had an influence on bringing the characters to life, particularly for Garner. “As soon as I knew we were doing the movie in Boulder, I signed up on all the Boulder websites and got information about Pearl Street and the bike paths,” she says. “I learned about the Green Party where Gray works and became an expert on Boulder’s prairie dog problem. I had so much random information that I almost felt like I’d lived there for a long time.”
Even the extras added to the mood of the film. Usually on a film set, extras will mill about silently – maybe reading or otherwise occupying themselves quietly during what can be a boring process of waiting for their scenes. Not in Boulder: “The extras brought their kids, they brought their instruments and sang, they climbed rock walls – it was incredible,” says Grant. That energy was palpable throughout the city, she continues: “Everyone went out of their way for us – they couldn’t have been better.”
* * *
For the cast and filmmakers, the title Catch and Release encapsulated what the film would be – though each has a different interpretation of what, exactly, the title means. Says Garner: “The ‘Catch’ part is that you never know when something magical is going to come along. You can watch it go by, or you can reach out, hold your breath and catch it.”
To Jaeger, Catch and Release is, “when you think that life is going to be wrapped up perfectly… then, as always occurs in real life, something happens that brings you back to reality. It reminds you that life is a constant struggle and you have to adapt. That’s where the ‘Release’ part comes in — letting go of all the things we thought were so perfect and wonderful.”
For Topping, “the title refers to the ability to let go, to let something that you love and revere go so that you can move on in life.”
But Grant, who came up with the title, has the last word. “‘Catch and Release’ is a fly fishing term; as most people know, it’s the philosophy that you should catch fish but release them back to the river so that you are not depleting the fish population. There is a quality that all these characters have of holding on really tight to the way they want life to be; each of them learns to relax into what life is.”
Production notes provided by Columbia Pictures.
Catch and Release
Starring: Jennifer Garner, Timothy Olyphant, Sam Jaeger, Juliette Lewis, Kevin Smith, Georgia Craig, Fiona Shaw
Directed by: Susannah Grant
Screenplay by: Susannah Grant
Release Date: January 26th, 2007
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, language, some drug use.
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $15,539,051 (96.2%)
Foreign: $619,436 (3.8%)
Total: $16,158,487 (Worldwide)