Taglines: The most unexpected comedy ever conceived.
Neurotic, self-absorbed and pessimistic Wally Mars’ (Jason Bateman) financial success with New York stock trading partner Leonard (Jeff Goldblum) does little to shake his fundamentally gloomy perspective on the world. The one bright spot is his best friend Kassie (Jennifer Aniston), beautiful and funny, who, unfortunately for Wally, is content being just friends. When Kassie, in her early 40s and single, announces that she wants to have a baby and doesn’t plan to let the lack of a husband or boyfriend stand in the way, Wally is bursting with anticipation at what he expects to be asked. Then Kassie lowers the boom—she wants him to help her find Mr. Perfect Sperm Donor, not be Mr. Perfect Sperm Donor.
Before long, Kassie finds the perfect donor in the form of charming, Nordiclooking Roland (Patrick Wilson). At Kassie’s “insemination party,” thrown by her best girlfriend Debbie (Juliette Lewis), Wally makes what is surely a lifechanging switch, then passes out and remembers nothing. Kassie’s plan moves right along—she becomes pregnant and happily moves back home to Minnesota to raise her baby. Seven years later she moves back to New York, and Wally, still neurotic and still single, gets acquainted with Kassie’s precocious—though slightly neurotic—son, Sebastian (Thomas Robinson). The two hit it off, and Wally starts spending more time with Sebastian.
“I can’t wait around for something that may never happen!” Wally becomes more and more intrigued, and confused, by how familiar Sebastian seems, even though Sebastian seems to understand very clearly he came from a “seed guy” and has no real father. Wally becomes convinced that Sebastian is his son—that he hijacked Kassie’s pregnancy. But how can Wally tell her? Kassie is getting ready to get married and have the family she always wanted.
If Wally tells Kassie the truth now, he could lose her forever—and if he doesn’t, he could lose his son. But the way a man looks at the world when he is young and single and the way he looks at it when he loves a woman and has a child of his own are two very different things. Neurotic Wally needs to find the courage to face the truth and take the biggest risk of his life.
The Switch is an American romantic comedy film, directed by Josh Gordon and Will Speck. Based on a screenplay written by Allan Loeb, the film, formerly titled The Baster, was inspired by the short story Baster by Jeffrey Eugenides, originally published in The New Yorker in 1996.[4][5] The film stars Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, and child actor Thomas Robinson. Patrick Wilson, Juliette Lewis, and Jeff Goldblum appear in key supporting roles.
Birthing “The Switch”
“The Switch” is based on the short story “Baster,” written by Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Jeffrey Eugenides, author of “The Virgin Suicides” and “Middlesex.” Screenwriter Allan Loeb discovered the story when it was originally published in The New Yorker in 1996 and believed it would be a great premise for a film. Loeb subsequently developed the screenplay with producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa of Bona Fide Productions.
Producer Nathan Kahane, president of Mandate Pictures (“Juno,” “Stranger than Fiction”), had an opportunity to read the script and became an enthusiastic fan. “We felt it had a totally fresh approach to a very unique subject, so we reached out to Albert [Berger] and Ron [Yerxa], whom we have worked with in the past, to let them know we were extremely passionate about partnering with them on this film.”
Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa have produced an eclectic roster of some of the most popular and critically acclaimed films of recent years, including “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Election,” “Cold Mountain,” “Bee Season” and “Little Children.”
Ron Yerxa explains why he and Berger were drawn to the premise behind “The Switch.” “We like comedies that explore the underlying social forces in America. This project had a unique premise and it presented social ideas in collision.”
But Berger says that doesn’t mean the story won’t resonate. “This movie, and particularly the character of Kassie, will be very familiar to audiences. She’s going through a classic dilemma that women face these days. She has a career. She is very well educated. She has been in relationships that haven’t exactly panned out for her. She very much wants to have a child and to find the right balance between family and career, so she goes ahead and does something about it. That go-at-it-alone quality is something that people will really relate to.”
Jennifer Aniston, empathizing with her character Kassie, explains, “When we meet Kassie she’s at a time in her life where she’s just ready to have a child. She alerts her best friend that she’s going to sort of do this on her own because she really feels she wants a child more than she needs the man, which I found quite interesting. I don’t know if I would do it that way, but anyway, she does, and there are a lot of women out there who do, so I think it’s great to represent.”
Yerxa felt that this story allowed the comedy genre to be developed and explored in a new way. He describes “The Switch” as a “subversive comedy” because the ordinary innocent peccadilloes—losing a phone number and needing to find it, misunderstanding a message and consequently believing a falsehood—are absent.
Nathan Kahane adds that “the core of this story is also really about Wally’s journey. He’s a regular guy who is so repressed he barely knows what he wants or how to get it. When he finally does take action on his feelings, he does a terrible thing and we then can’t help but laugh as we watch him repent and redeem himself to become the kind of man a boy would be proud to call his father.”
In “The Switch,” Wally suffers a real crisis of conscience over his deceitful act. He risks losing Kassie forever as a friend if he tells her, and yet he has to face that not telling her would be the actions of a child and not a grown man. For the first time in his life, Wally has to grow up and take responsibility for his own actions, regardless of the outcome, because it is the right thing to do.
Kassie, on the other hand, must deal with trust—being deceived by her best friend in a way that is irrevocable. Her innocent denial of the fact that Sebastian looks and acts so much like Wally is her own way of postponing the inevitable truth—knowing she will need to make some choices as a result.
“As far as the comedy goes,” says Bateman, “it’s not pie-in-the-face, winky, slapstick kind of broad comedy. It’s whatever laughs would come from people being in a real situation, so we never lean into any of the stuff and it’s not some knee-slapping, silly comedy. It’s character-driven with a lot of reactions—stuff that I really like to do and it’s material that makes me laugh, so if I’ve ever made you laugh, then you’d probably like this.”
“In a way, this is a comedy, but it’s a moral tale too,” Ron Yerxa says. “The implications of not being emotionally honest or going deep enough with yourself so that almost every way you act is the opposite of what you really want and need, that’s certainly the character that Jason Bateman plays. Jennifer Aniston’s character is strong and clear in her desires. She holds on to her beliefs and is a good parent even in the face of the obstructions and difficulties she never anticipated.”
Yerxa continues, “It’s interesting that Jennifer Aniston’s character is a good parent throughout, but Jason Bateman’s character, when he first meets Sebastian, is put off. He has no tolerance or humanistic connection to children and it’s really an act of discovery on his part. The very reasons he can’t stand this child are the things that he repudiates in himself. So, only by a mutual act of self-discovery can he open himself up to accept and love the child. And the journey here is that you might be a totally narcissistic, materialistic, career-oriented New Yorker, but given enough time if you open up to the people who enter your life, you have a chance to become a much better person than you were in the beginning. So I’d put it in the social-class category of comedy.”
“‘The Switch,’ in my view,” says Berger, “is really about a guy, Wally, Jason Bateman, who has very strong, unrealized feelings towards Kassie, Jennifer Aniston, who he thinks is his best friend. But, what the audience realizes is that there’s much more to it for him and it’s one of those movies that takes the character a while to catch up to what the audience may be suspecting early on. It’s a very recognizable situation. There are a lot of dynamics in relationships where a character has to grow into his own feelings and I think that’s very much the journey of Wally in this movie.”
On Board with Directors Josh Gordon & Will Speck
Berger and Yerxa knew of Josh Gordon and Will Speck from their extensive commercial work, but it was their hilarious figure-skating spoof “Blades of Glory” that made the directors appealing candidates for “The Switch” to all the filmmakers involved. “We thought ‘Blades of Glory’ was quite witty and inspired and had an interestingly odd, unexpected premise,” says Ron Yerxa. In “Blades of Glory,” where two men partner up to compete for the national figure-skating championships, the directors explored gender roles and expectations as well as the changing dynamic of adversaries becoming friends.
“We thought they’d be a good match, because they could deal with the outrageous and the physical,” continues Yerxa, “but they also wanted to explore the characters and crisis of conscience and other weightier issues.”
Kahane comments, “Once we all sat down with Will and Josh to hear their thoughts on how to bring this great script to life, it was clear that we had to make this movie.”
Berger adds, “Will and Josh are fantastic collaborators and wonderful directors. They have primarily made a name for themselves in the world of commercials. They have one feature under their belt, ‘Blades of Glory,’ which is a mainstream comedy. This was something a bit more sophisticated and I think the direction they are moving toward. They’re perfectionists. Ron and I have worked a lot with directing teams and Will and Josh are really unique in the sense that they collaborate very closely, but at the same time they have divided interests, so that Will is more in the arena of production design and costume design whereas Josh is more camera oriented.”
Will Speck, commenting on the film’s appeal from his and Josh Gordon’s point of view, says, “I think the thing that we thought was different here was that it didn’t have a lot of artificial conceit to it. These characters felt real and they felt grounded in the real world. It was pretty much, to us, as it would unfold in real life.”
Josh Gordon adds: “It really is about how families come together in kind of interesting ways. They don’t have to follow a pre-prescribed path, and this group of people certainly didn’t do that in this movie.”
Some of the cast members commented on the experience of working with two directors: “Working with two directors was great,” says Jason Bateman. “Will and Josh are a lot of fun and we share the same sensibilities. It was like doing a film with two of your really good buddies. They’ve really worked out a great system and I’d love to work with another pair. It’s much more efficient, you know.”
“The only other time I’ve worked with two directors was when I did a Gap commercial,” says Patrick Wilson, “with Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who did ‘Little Miss Sunshine.’ That was the only time I’d ever experienced two directors in the room, so I was wondering how it was going to go, but they get along so well. They’re like Butch and Sundance…or Batman and Robin…actually, it’s more like Tango and Cash.
Will was the one who’d run in and give the acting notes and Josh handled more of the technical side. They work really well together, which makes it easy on everyone around.”
For Juliette Lewis, it was a new experience. “This is the first time I’ve worked with the duo, the directing team, and this is a very unique situation. They seem to really agree and the great thing about creative partnerships is they probably have different talents and together collectively create this really creative dynamic. And they’re really, really fun.”
The Switch (2010)
Directed by: Josh Gordon, Will Speck
Starring: Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston, Victor Pagan, Juliette Lewis, Jeff Goldblum, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Kelli Barrett, , Edward James Hyland, Caroline Dhavernas, Will Swenson, Patrick Wilson
Screenplay by: Allan Loeb, Jeffrey Eugenides
Production Design by: Adam Stockhausen
Cinematography by: Jess Hall
Film Editing by: John Axelrad
Costume Design by: Kasia Walicka-Maimone
Set Decoration by: Carol Silverman
Art Direction by: Larry M. Gruber
Music by: Alex Wurman
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic content, sexual material including dialogue, some nudity, drug use and language.
Studio: Miramax Films
Release Date: August 20, 2010
