A podcast with Going the Distance writer Geoff LaTulippe, potential egobursting ahead
This podcast was a tough one. It’s an interview with the writer of Going the Distance, Geoff LaTulippe. Geoff wrote the original screenplay that was on the 2008 Blacklist (Up in the Air was also on it), which is a list of all of the best unproduced screenplays floating around Hollywood. I’ve read Geoff’s screenplay, or at least one early draft, and I thought it was a pretty funny, dark, mean-spirited romantic comedy with an appropriate and well-written bittersweet conclusion (it can be found in PDF form if you do a little Googling). Unfortunately, other than sharing the title and some of the character’s names, Nanette Burstein’s film of the Going the Distance script, starring Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, is a pandering, irritating disaster. You can read my 2100 word review here.
I alerted Geoff to my dislike of the film very early on in the interview as I didn’t want it to be a complete surprise that I loathed the movie, easily the worst movie I’ve seen since Phantom Punch back in April of 2009. So I went about asking questions about how he felt about the major differences between his first produced screenplay and the final product, making sure I differentiated between how I felt about the script and the film. He handled it well, especially with all the nit-picking I did, and because he had to carefully support the film if he ever wanted to work again. And I thought that with the way the podcast was going, the interview would be over in 20 minutes, but instead the conversation developed and went on for 2 1/2 hours. I’ve cut it down to about 80-85 minutes for the listeners, which is plenty for those who need to hear me complain about each and every thing I disliked about Going the Distance.
Download the full interview.
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