Paul Dano Too Nervous to Actually Watch Screening of His New Movie Ruby Sparks
Wednesday night at Sunshine Cinemas was another of the indie lovefests we’ve come to look forward to (and only partially thanks to the apple cinnamon popcorn dust they have at the concession stand). This time it was for Ruby Sparks, the latest from Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, the husband and wife director team behind our favorite cuteferno Little Miss Sunshine. Ruby Sparks is the story of a creatively anguished young writer (Paul Dano) who physically manifests and falls in love with one of his characters, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl of the title, played by Dano’s real life squeeze Zoe Kazan. Ms. Kazan also wrote the screenplay. Of its inception, Ms. Kazan (in a peekaboo Dolce & Gabbana number) told The Observer, “I was walking home from work one night, and there was a mannequin discarded in a trash can in our neighborhood. I thought it was a person, and it scared me! And I thought of the Pygmalion myth about the sculptor who falls in love with his statue. I had a flash of the sculptor alone in his studio, turning his head and thinking he sees the statue move. I thought, ‘Oh, I bet that’s sort of how that myth came to be!’” Per Mr. Dano, “When [Zoe] was about five pages in, she showed it to me, and I said ‘Is this for us?’” Read More
