I Give It a Year is a comedy from the writer of Borat and Bruno that lifts the veil on the realities of the first year of marriage. Since they met at a party, ambitious high-flyer Nat (Rose Byrne) and struggling novelist Josh (Rafe Spall) have been deliriously happy despite their differences. Josh is a thinker, Nat’s a doer, but the spark between them is undeniable.
Their wedding is a dream come true, but no one — family, friends and even the minister who marries them — is convinced that they will last. Josh’s ex-girlfriend, Chloe (Anna Faris), and Nat’s handsome American client Guy (Simon Baker) could offer attractive alternatives. With their first anniversary approaching, neither wants to be the first to give up, but will they make it?
I Give It a Year is written and directed by Dan Mazer (Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Bruno), and is produced by Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner (Love Actually, Atonement), along with Kris Thykier (Stardust).
Starting where other romantic comedies finish, I GIVE IT A YEAR stars Rose Byrne (Bridesmaids), Rafe Spall (One Day), Anna Faris (The Dictator) and Simon Baker (“The Mentalist”). The film also features Stephen Merchant (“Extras”), Minnie Driver (Good Will Hunting) Jason Flemyng (X-Men: First Class) and Olivia Colman (“Peep Show”).
About the Production (2013)
Filmmaker Dan Mazer had a very specific idea for his debut as a feature film director, I Give It a Year. He had already been enjoying something of an iconoclastic career, working with Sacha Baron Cohen as a writer and producer on ‘Da Ali G Show’, Ali G Indahouse, Borat and Bruno, while also either producing or executive producing ‘The 11 O’Clock Show’, ‘Dog Bites Man’ and The Dictator.
“But I wanted to do something that was a bit more mainstream and yet which still had the ability to be edgy and a bit shocking,” he begins. “I am getting older, the craziness can’t carry on forever and there comes a point where you don’t want to be shocking for shocking’s sake. Funny is funny.”
“Ultimately, what brings all my work together is that comedy to me is about character,” Mazer adds. “That’s where it starts and finishes and if you have compelling characters that feel real and three-dimensional and all of the humor comes from that, then whether they have got their balls in someone’s face or whether they are giving a romantic speech, as long as it comes from a place of character and truth, it will work.”
With a career in comedy Mazer decided he would work his humor around romance, though he had no interest in writing and directing a traditional romantic comedy. He was delighted to work in conjunction with Working Title and says that while he admires the breadth of their work — from Barton Fink to Burn After Reading, Shaun of the Dead to Senna — he was keen to subvert the comedy genre with which they are closely associated.
“I thought it would be good to slightly reinvent what Working Title are traditionally renowned for and give a new spin to the romantic comedy,” Mazer says. “So I thought that it would be funny to write a comedy where instead of a couple getting together, with all the stereotypical things we have come to understand about that particular genre and trope, you subvert that and do a similar thing about a couple that you want to split up.”
We have all seen the rush to the railway station where an eager lover is yearning to propose “and we have all seen those things a million times, so to play against that, for example, was an immediately funny and doable idea. I thought of all those set pieces that we have all seen hundreds of times and thought, ‘How I could play against those, how could I turn them upside down and confound expectation?’”
Producer and co-chairman of Working Title Films Tim Bevan comments, “Dan has worked with us a number of times as a writer since we met on Ali G Indahouse. He has always expressed his desire to direct and I Give It A Year proved to be the right project. The truth of it is that there are very few comedy directors in this country and Dan has had a lot of creative experience around some very successful movies.”
Mazer goes on to say that more humor can be mined from a break-up than a coming together. “I think on a broader level there’s nothing that funny about happiness and people coming together. If you are sitting with your mates at a pub, their stories about splitting up with their girlfriends, their stories about breaking up, stories about arguments and about things going wrong, they are much funnier than, ‘She was amazing, we met, wasn’t it adorable.’”
Mazer was determined that I GIVE IT A YEAR would remain a “feel-good comedy, because it is about people finding love in the right places after a slightly disastrous marriage. I didn’t want to leave a nasty taste in the mouth, but at the same time misery, acrimony, anger and arguing are much funnier than love and butterflies, champagne and all of that.”
The key to making the movie, Mazer says, was to remember that I GIVE IT A YEAR is “a comedy with romance.” He adds, “It happens to be about relationships, and it is definitely a comedy but it is not one of those romantic comedies that has four jokes in it and is about girls wearing nice dresses and being happy and all the jokes are in the trailer.
“It is definitely a comedy first and is a romance second. Hopefully, everyone will be happy. Obviously, my history in terms of the films I have done before are quite edgy and different and iconoclastic and hopefully I have brought that sensibility to this film as well, but maybe a slightly more kind of accessible and palatable iteration of that.”
Producer Kris Thykier says that I Give It a Year picks up where most romantic comedies end. “What happens when the fairytale romance has ebbed away, what’s the reality?” he asks. “This story has a real modernity to it, and it is a comedy that happens to be based around relationships rather than being something in the vein of where romantic comedy has ended up now. This goes back to being a straight comedy that happens to be about relationships.”
“We all recognize what happens when two right people get together at the wrong time,” he continues. “We have all been in a relationship with someone who isn’t a bad person but isn’t the right person. This film is about two people who rush into a relationship.”
Thykier believes that people in their late 20s and 30s feel pressure to be in a successful relationship “and to be married”. He adds, “There is a social expectation and if you haven’t managed to crack a successful relationship and probably taken it to the next level at that age people think there might be something wrong with you.”
Leading man Rafe Spall, who plays the central character Josh, agrees. “For my generation marriage has become fashionable again,” the actor says. “For my parents’ generation marriage wasn’t necessarily fashionable, but people like it these days. They like to get married.”
“And when something like that becomes fashionable then you end up with a lot of people who shouldn’t be together. People getting married for the wrong reasons,” notes Spall.
To pull together the story, Mazer turned to his own life, and the life of his friends. “My marriage and my friends’ marriages and my life have all been plundered with a reckless abandon,” the director laughs. “I have to say I have pilloried and pillaged and completely stolen things.”
“I am very happily married and I love my wife inordinately, but we obviously have funny arguments and tricky times and early on in the script there is a row that my wife and I had and I wrote down verbatim, but when people read the script, they said, ‘Well, that is not believable, people would never say that. That’s not credible.’ So I had to dilute some of the reality of my life!”
Mazer adds, “My marriage and my friends marriages have definitely provided inspiration for this film but I must say that my wife is very keen to let the world know that certain instances and certain sexual predilections in the film are not hers!”
I Give It a Year (2013)
Directed by: Dan Mazer
Starring: Rose Byrne, Rafe Spall, Alex Macqueen, Stephen Merchant, Jane Asher, Simon Baker
Screenplay by: Dan Mazer
Production Design by: Simon Elliott
Cinematography by: Ben Davis
Film Editing by: Tony Cranstoun
Costume Design by: Charlotte Walter
Set Decoration by: Rebecca Alleway
Music by: Ilan Eshkeri
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, language and some graphic nudity.
Studio: Magnolia Pictures
Release Date: August 9, 2013
Visits: 44
