On the finish of Olivia Wilde‘s newest movie The Invite, earlier than the credit roll there’s a transient second when the display flashes to a word that reads “For Diane.”
The Diane is point out is Diane Keaton, and Wilde has devoted the movie — which follows a pair barely holding their marriage collectively who invite their neighbors over for a rapidly derailed feast — to the late star.
“I really wanted to show this movie to Diane. I don’t think that there is an Invite without Diane Keaton because she’s in so many of the films that inspired this film,” Wilde informed The Hollywood Reporter on the L.A. premiere on Wednesday. “She is the first actress I recognized to kind of represent a totally unique and complex woman; she didn’t fit any archetype, she was singular in her vulnerability, her complexity, her creativity. She’s unlike anyone else and she was very encouraging to me personally, and I just wanted this to be for her.”
Keaton, who passed away in October, performed Wilde’s mom within the 2015 comedy Love the Coopers. When she died, Wilde penned a protracted tribute on Instagram, recalling how “she laughed through night shoots, kept us roaring with laughter constantly actually, and talked to us for hours about love. She told me to keep my heart open. She told me to direct. She told me to be brave. She told me to keep laughing.”
Wilde not solely directs the undertaking — her third time behind the digicam, following Booksmart and Don’t Fear Darling — but in addition stars alongside Seth Rogen because the couple in disaster. Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton play their neighbors in a narrative that was tailored from the 2020 Spanish-language movie The Individuals Upstairs.
“This project gave me the opportunity to approach a production in a way that I’d always dreamed,” Wilde defined. “I wanted to really workshop material together, I wanted to feel real collaboration, I wanted to rehearse, I wanted to shoot on film, and because of the logistical reality of this film being in one location, we could also shoot in order, which was something that I always dreamt of. I thought, ‘Wow, we can approach it like a play.’ So it was a film that allowed for a process that was so singular, and I just thought, ‘That’s what I want.’ I want to make something because of the process and not the imagined result.”
Writers Rashida Jones and Will McCormack additionally took half in that rehearsal period, adjusting the script as the entire staff brainstormed how you can make the characters deeper and extra complicated. And when it got here to creating modifications from the Spanish model, McCormack mentioned, “We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, we love the Spanish film. I think the ending was something we really focused on from the jump, that was something we gave the most attention to. And with any movie with relationships, we’re trying to figure out why they fell in love, how they fell in love, are they still in love and if they’ll remain together and just really digging into that and just making sure that all worked.”
The Invite slides into choose theaters on Friday, opening extensive July 10.
