Man up – Biographies
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Presents MAN UP A film by Ben Palmer (88 min., UK, 2015) Language: English Distribution Publicity Bonne Smith Star PR 1352 Dundas St. West Tel: 416-488-4436 Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6J 1Y2 Fax: 416-488-8438 Tel: 416-516-9775 Fax: 416-516-0651 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] www.mongrelmedia.com @MongrelMedia MongrelMedia LOGLINE When Nancy is mistaken for Jack’s blind date under the clock at Waterloo Station, she decides to take fate into her own hands and just go with it. What could possibly go wrong? MAN UP is an honest, heart-warming romantic comedy about taking chances and rolling with the consequences. One night, two people, on a first date like no other... SHORT SYNOPSIS Meet Nancy (Lake Bell): 34, single, hung-over, and exhausted by her well meaning but clueless friends’ continual matchmaking. 10 times bitten, 100 times shy, after an especially disastrous set-up at her friends’ engagement party, Nancy is basically done with dating. She’s reached the end of her rope, and is more than happy to hole up, seal up, and resign herself to a life alone. That is until Jack (Simon Pegg) mistakes Nancy for his blind date under the clock at Waterloo Station, and she does the unthinkable and just… goes with it. Because what if pretending to be someone else finally makes her man up, and become her painfully honest, awesomely unconventional, and slightly unstable true self? Best just to let the evening unfold, roll with the consequences, and see if one unpredictable, complicated, rather unique night can bring these two messy souls together. MAN UP is an honest, heart-warming screwball of a rom-com. A film about putting yourself out there, taking chances, and keeping a hold on that ever-diminishing glimmer of hope, no matter the shit life throws at you. LONG SYNOPSIS Meet Nancy (Lake Bell): 34, single, hung-over, and exhausted by her well meaning but clueless friends’ continual matchmaking. 10 times bitten, 100 times shy, after an especially disastrous set-up at her friends’ engagement party, Nancy is basically done with dating. She’s reached the end of her rope, and is more than happy to hole up, seal up, and resign herself to a life alone. That is until Jack (Simon Pegg) mistakes Nancy for his blind date under the clock at Waterloo Station. Charming, malfunctioning, a lovely if somewhat repressed man, still reeling from an ongoing divorce. And he’s not going to be helped by Nancy doing the unthinkable and going along with his mistake. After all, since she’s had no luck on any of her dates… where’s the harm in gate crashing somebody else’s? Lead the way, Jack. Which is how Nancy finds herself bar hopping across London, having more and more fun. Beginning with beers on the South Bank, which leads to shots in a Mexican Cantina; which leads to a highly competitive, sexually charged bowl-off at Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes. And as more and more drinks are had, more and more sparks fly, and Nancy can’t help but notice how well she’s doing – or, more specifically, how well “Jessica” is doing. But will Nancy ever find the right moment to come clean to Jack? Or will her cover be blown by Sean (Rory Kinnear), an amorous admirer from school, who’s now rather inconveniently a bartender at the bowling alley? Will a (sort of) chance encounter with Jack’s soon-to-be ex-wife and her new lover completely destabilise Jack? And, most importantly, will he have the sense to realise that Nancy might just be the woman he’s been looking for all this time? The producers of Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy, Scott Pilgrim, Paul, Attack the Block, and Cuban Fury present an honest, heart-warming, screwball of a rom-com. A film about putting yourself out there, taking chances, and keeping a hold on that ever- diminishing glimmer of hope, no matter the shit life throws at you. Because, sometimes….you’ve just got to Man Up. STARTING UP MAN UP Given that Man Up is a funny, rich, warm, life-affirming romantic comedy about the benefits of taking a risk in life - or, literally, ‘manning up’ - it’s somewhat apt that it began life as one of the biggest gambles known to the film industry: a spec script. Tess Morris began her career working on a number of television projects, but by her own admission, as she entered her thirties, she had yet to make the break into movies. “I had just moved back to my teenage bedroom, and I was about to turn 31,” she recalls. “I got to the point where I thought, if I wasn’t going to make money as a writer, what am I doing? A proper life crisis!” Then, a chance encounter with a stranger gave her an idea. “I was standing under a clock at Waterloo Station and this guy came up to me and said, ‘are you Claire?’ He thought I was his blind date. I said ‘no’, but then he walked away and I thought, ‘what if I’d said yes?’ There’s an idea!” Morris decided it was time to follow the advice of the title of her own script, and took time off to bash her idea into shape. When she finished, just three months later, there was only one British production company she wanted to send it to: Big Talk, the company behind iconic comedies like Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End. “I wrote it very much with Big Talk in mind,” says Morris. “I love Big Talk films, in terms of the sensibility and tone.” And when the script for Man Up landed on the desk of Big Talk’s Nira Park, it couldn’t have been better timed. “I’d seen Bridesmaids at the South By South West film festival and became completely obsessed with it,” says Park. “I organised a screening for Team Big Talk and said, ‘why can't we make a film like this, with a fantastic female character and a fantastic female voice?’ A week later the script arrived on our doorstep. That never happens. It never happens.” Park was impressed in particular by Nancy, the multi-layered, multi-faceted heroine of the piece. “It was a brilliant female character, written by a real person,” she says. “It wasn’t fantasy, just warts-and-all, and properly funny. We met Tess and really liked her, and got stuck in with another draft.” After a very quick, virtually unprecedented, period of development, Man Up was given the green light. Now all Park and her fellow producers, James Biddle and Rachael Prior, had to do was find a director, and two actors who could fill the key roles of Nancy and Jack, the blind date who may just change Nancy’s life. MANNING MAN UP The role of Jack - the big-hearted recent divorcee who is deciding to get back out into the big wide world of romance with a blind date with a girl almost half his age - was a tricky one to fill. It needed an actor of considerable range, who could blend disarming vulnerability with considerable comedic chops. Luckily, Big Talk had the perfect Jack right under its nose. “We were filming the finale of The World’s End, and I emailed it to Simon on December 22 at the end of the day,” says Park. “I said, ‘here’s a script. You don’t need to read it now - read it over your Christmas holidays.’ He literally wrote to me that night, about 10.30pm, saying ‘I’m in’.” For Pegg’s part, saying ‘yes’ to Man Up, as star and executive producer, was one of the easiest decisions of his career. “It had a lot to offer,” he says of the script. “It felt very fun and in some ways Jack is a light, conventional figure to play, but he’s complex. He’s trying to sell himself on a date, but at the same time he can’t help the bitterness seeping through the cracks and the obvious resentment towards his ex. It’s fun playing a character who has an agenda he’s not expressing but just having it bleed through in the eyes and in the sighs.” Soon after that, the manning up of Man Up continued apace when Ben Palmer came on board as director. Although he’d just worked with Big Talk on the television comedy Chickens, Palmer is perhaps best known as the man who helmed most of The Inbetweeners for Channel 4 and E4, as well as the little matter of The Inbetweeners Movie, the highest-grossing comedy of all time in the UK. Yet, rather than rushing straight into a project after that, Palmer took his time, moving back into television. “When The Inbetweeners was as successful as it was, there was a flood of scripts coming in from America, but they didn’t connect with me,” he says. “I just respond to the writing.” Which is exactly what happened with Man Up, which Palmer was unsure about until he picked up the script. “I started reading it on my phone!” he laughs. “I’m so used to reading a script and going, ‘no!’, after ten pages. But I started reading it at one in the morning and very quickly read half of it. It took me by surprise. It reminds me of the way the Americans would approach a comedy like this - there’s a sharpness of dialogue, and a sense of Bridesmaids in the set-pieces.” Male lead and director secured, other casting fell quickly into place, with the likes of Ken Stott and Harriet Walter as Nancy’s doting parents, Sharon Horgan as Nancy’s sister who is concerned her younger sibling is letting her life go to waste, Rory Kinnear as Sean, a dangerously deranged and quick-to-disrobe former school classmate/stalker of Nancy’s, Ophelia Lovibond as the boundlessly romantic Jessica, Jack’s real blind date, and Olivia Williams as Jack’s waspish ex-wife.