Mayhem in The Morning
There’s a storied history of working women in sexy screwball comedies. From Rosalind Russell’s ace newswoman squaring off against Cary Grant as an underhanded editor in Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday to Melanie Griffith’s working class secretary pretending to be her high-powered boss in Working Girl, women trying to get on top have turned out to be some of film comedy’s smartest, wittiest and most appealing heroes.
Screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna has long been drawn to the trials, and triumphs, of young women finding their way – and themselves – in the workplace, which first came to the fore when she penned the hit comedy The Devil Wears Prada, based on the bestselling book about a young assistant who valiantly faces off with the boss from hell.
Now she brings her refreshingly contemporary POV to a portrait of a feisty young upstart who falls right into the middle of what might well be the highest high-pressure cooker in all the working world: producing morning news, a job notorious for driving the young and ambitious either to the heights of achievement… or to the madhouse.
McKenna began with the idea of a struggling, recently let-go, local news producer, whose career prospects seem about as bleak as her foundering love life until she gets her first big break at “Daybreak.” She knows the odds couldn’t be any more stacked against her, but Becky Fuller is not going to let a once-in-a-lifetime chance go by without giving it her all. That’s when this overexcited and unsinkable young woman collides head-on with her polar opposite: a legendary evening anchor who cannot stand anything soft, sweet or, worst of all, fluffy, but is forced to take on all of that, and more, when Becky recruits him as the show’s new co-host and, so she hopes, savior.
When she pitched the story of Morning Glory to J. J. Abrams, he instantly fell in love with the push-pull tension between a determined newcomer who won’t say die and the ultimate work-place troublemaker, who won’t cooperate to save his life.
“The engine of Morning Glory is the very fun dynamic between these two terrific characters: Becky, a young woman who is incredibly enthusiastic about her new job, who just wants everyone to believe in her; and Mike, this once-revered, now-retired anchor who could not despise morning news any more than he does and does everything he can to make Becky’s job absolutely impossible. I loved that Aline was going for a high-energy, old school feeling, like the movies of Preston Sturges. Morning news is a great backdrop for a work-place comedy because it’s such a live-wire atmosphere, but Aline came at it from a completely fresh approach. Succeeding at this job means everything to Becky, yet Mike has no intention of making it easy for her.”
The team at Bad Robot was also excited by the fun of exposing the behind-the-scenes mayhem of the morning news shows that many Americans wake up to every day – which are rife not only with wacky weather reports, rampaging animals and baked lasagnas, but also with some of the most outrageous and desperate bids for ratings in all of television.
“If you’ve seen any clips on Youtube, you know that morning news is full of some the most absurdly hysterical stuff that’s ever been captured on video,” notes Burk. “It was exciting to think about all the comedic potential in that.”
They also had little doubt that Brosh McKenna could get to the heart of that comic potential in the final screenplay. “We were all big fans of Aline’s work,” says executive producer Sherryl Clark, who runs the feature production side of Bad Robot, “and we thought she was the perfect fit for this story.”
McKenna is known for her dynamic use of dialogue, but also believes in research. Right away, she set her alarm for the middle of the night and began spending her days behind the scenes at all the New York morning shows, getting an inside glimpse at just how tough a lifestyle a young producer must lead.
Says Clark, “I think one of the greatest compliments we received was when Morley Safer, who makes a cameo in the film, asked if Aline had ever worked in news because he thought everything was so incredibly accurate.”
The more she learned, the more McKenna felt it had to be more than the now waning war of news versus entertainment. Instead, she had her main character face head-on today’s reality: that the two have become entwined beyond separation. Mike Pomeroy might believe heatedly in the power of real news to impact the world, and Becky might be awed by his skills as a reporter, but she knows that the world has changed to the point that Mike must either find a new way… or fade away. And, as crazy as drives her, she wants to save his career as much as she wants to kick-start her own.
“Aline’s script acknowledges the debate and touches upon the importance of the news, but her story is not really about that,” explains Clark. “It’s really about a girl who is an underdog, who comes to the big city to try to change the fate of the fourth-rated morning show in America, and how, in the process, she has to turn around some of the most cynical, jaded people in existence.”
From the time the script was in early development, Aline Brosh McKenna and J.J. Abrams dreamed of having Harrison Ford in the film. “I felt this was right up his alley because he’s got an amazing sense of humor,” says Abrams, who first worked with Ford many years ago, when he wrote the drama Regarding Henry. “We tend to think of Harrison as the action hero, as Han Solo and Indiana Jones, but he has always been extremely funny as well. It’s just been a long time since he’s had a great comic role.”
Quickly after attaching Ford to the project, the search for a director was on and one name came quickly to the forefront: Roger Michell, whose knack for disarming comedy came to fore in Notting Hill, starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant in an unlikely love story between the world’s most famous movie star and an ordinary London bookseller. Michell is also known for the Oscar-nominated drama Venus starring Peter O’Toole in one of his most celebrated roles, the critically acclaimed drama The Mother and the thriller Changing Lanes.
“Roger Michell can do it all and he always brings a distinct sense of style and grace to anything he does,” says Abrams. “Roger gave Morning Glory a wonderful, vibrant look and he brought out terrific performances from the actors.”
The screenplay took Michell by surprise. “I’d wanted to come back to America and make a film that would bring a lot of people joy,” he says, “and when I read this script I felt it had terrific potential. It was based in a real, recognizable world – the world of morning television – but, one that was also far more seductive and interesting that I imagined. The humor was in the characters and how Becky Fuller prevails by the sheer force of her personality and charm, turning this unlikely mix of people into a success.”
Welcome to The Working Week
The trickiest part of pulling off Morning Glory would be the most essential: casting the lead character of Becky Fuller, who had to be vulnerable, vivacious yet sly and savvy enough to work her way up from rock bottom to winning the day when no one believed she could. “We needed someone you really want to root for,” says J.J. Abrams. “She had to be bubbly and fun, but the treacherous part was that she also had to have an equal amount of depth and sophistication. Rachel McAdams brought all of that. She nails the classical comedy stuff, but her character is also full of heart, honesty and emotion.”
Adds Sherryl Clark: “Rachel is a breath of fresh air. She jumped in with both feet and I think she makes Becky very relatable. Everyone feels like an underdog at some point in their life, and Rachel just captures that feeling.”
McAdams right away felt a kinship with Becky, in both her foibles and her unflagging spirit. “I think a lot of young people have had the experience where you come in fresh to a brand new job and suddenly, you find yourself up against a bunch of seasoned professionals who want to do things their way,” she says. “What I love is that Becky takes that situation head-on, approaches it with the same amount of vigor she brings to everything she does, and turns it upside down.”
McAdams worked closely with screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna to get to know her doggedly determined character backwards and forwards. “Aline is such a great writer and she knows her characters so well that she was great to have involved in the process,” says the actress. “It was really exciting for me to be able to talk to her throughout the production, to get ideas from her and bounce new thoughts off her, and we were constantly adding little bits here and there and enhancing the character.”
With Becky Fuller-like intensity, McAdams also dove into her own personal research, visiting nearly all the morning shows in New York to analyze how they really work. “I talked to everyone – the producers, the people who book the stories, the camera operators, the guys in the control room – to try to understand how it happens from every possible angle. I discovered that there’s a whole different language that goes on back there,” she says. “And everything moves so quickly. One minute people are panicking and freaking out and it gets really heated and the next minute they’re joking, laughing and off to lunch. What really made an impression was the high-wire nature of live television – that once you say or do something on the air, you can’t take it back. That is terrifying.”
Another thing that took McAdams by surprise is how downright physical a job producing a morning news show can be. “Becky is a bit more of an action hero than I expected,” she laughs. “There was a lot running up and down stairs and all over the place, as she tries to wrangle all these different people with their different agendas, so that was a fun surprise.”
Once on the set, McAdams seemed to inhabit the character so completely, even the director was taken aback. Recalls Michell, “Rachel had told me she didn’t think of herself as a comedic actress, but it was immediately clear that not only is she extremely funny physically, she can be wonderfully comedic with her body and way of moving. She also combines her top comedic skills with an enormous beating heart. She has this sweet, innocent energy that becomes a part of the film. Becky has this ridiculously overwhelming job, yet Rachel plays her like a kid at her first day of school. Rachel’s spirit really runs the film, as she shows how Becky prevails by the force, really, of her will and charm.”
That charm is given a severe test as Becky begins to realize that her long-time news idol, Mike Pomeroy, might not be a dream to work with; in fact, he might actually deserve his reputation as one of the worst persons in the world. Yet, the more cantankerous and resistant Mike gets, the more tenacious Becky becomes – a dynamic that McAdams loved enacting with Harrison Ford.
“Harrison played Mike beautifully. He’s so deadpan, so dry, so sarcastic, I really felt like I couldn’t budge him! He was understated, yet so full, it was just exciting to interact with him,” she says.
For Guy Riedel, the beauty of McAdams’ performance is the degree to which it counterpoints that of Ford. He sums up: “Rachel is so fun and lively and so like a great cheerleader that when you contrast that with Mike Pomeroy, who is so dour and angry, and see her hold her own against him – well, there’s nothing better.”
McAdams was equally thrilled by the opportunity to work with Diane Keaton “What I love about Diane is that she plays Colleen so you can see the heart underneath, so you can see this is a woman who is willing to do anything, even dress up in a sumo suit, to get people to laugh, to get them to smile, to get them watching in the morning. She made Colleen funny and tough, but vulnerable as well.”
If Becky is at war all morning long, she finds some unexpected romantic peace later in the day when she begins seeing the news magazine producer Adam Bennett (PATRICK WILSON), in spite of her worse-than-spotty dating record. For years, Becky has been too busy to even realize when she was attracted to someone, but Adam doesn’t let her off the hook. “At first, Becky just thinks she wants to pick his brain a little, get some insight into how to deal with this strange beast known as Mike Pomeroy,” McAdams explains. “And Becky is so clueless about men that she completely misinterprets all of Adam’s signals. We have a very clumsy beginning but… let’s just say, it turns out quite well.” McAdams certainly made a lasting impression on Wilson. “She gives Becky this wonderful frenetic energy without going completely crazy or ever distancing herself from the audience. It was easy to fall for her,” he sums up.
Morning Glory (2010)
Directed by: Roger Michell
Starring: Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, 50 Cent, Patrick Wilson, Jeff Goldblum, Noah Bean, Vanessa Aspillaga, Linda Powell, Patti D’Arbanville, Mario Frieson, David Fonteno, Steve Park
Screenplay by: Aline Brosh McKenna
Production Design by: Mark Friedberg
Cinematography by: Alwin H. Küchler
Film Editing by: Dan Farrell, Nick Moore, Steven Weisberg
Costume Design by: Frank L. Fleming
Set Decoration by: Alyssa Winter
Art Direction by: Alex DiGerlando, Kim Jennings
Music by: David Arnold
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some sexual content including dialogue, language and brief drug references.
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: November 10, 2010
