The ensemble-cast film, which opens this July, deals complicatedly with interlocking stories about trust, betrayal, love, and blackmail. The main actors, including stars Tom Arnold, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Lisa Kudrow, Steve Coogan, and Jesse Bradford, drive the character-heavy piece.

Roos describes the movie as "three interwoven tales about contemporary life in Los Angeles. The spine that runs through it is this relationship between a step-brother and step-sister who were in the same family briefly for a year, twenty years ago, and they’ve stayed in touch for various reasons now. When it was done, my boyfriend looked at it and said 'it’s about the search for family,' and I think it is about that and about the importance of forgiving oneself for the things that we do.”

Roos sat down with writer Dennis Hensley for a conversation in the fest’s Queer Lounge regarding the unconventional film, and how it at first seemed a bit “unpitchable,” but ultimately became a little movie that could—and may, by the looks of it--turn into a rather big box office success. Following are selected transcripts from their public interview.

David Hensley: The cast talked about the odyssey of this thing. How hard was this to get made?
Don Roos: Very hard. I wrote the script for Lisa (Kudrow) and for Tom Arnold.

Hensley : Who, by the way, is so fun to talk to and is great in the movie. He’s got a sweet, gooey center.
Roos: Gwynyth Paltrow was going to do it but her dad passed away and she just wasn’t going to do any films for awhile. She would have played Maggie Gyllenhaal’s role. Then Jennifer Garner was going to do Maggie Gyllenhaal’s role and then she had to drop out because of scheduling problems. Maggie sort of rescued us. This was over the course of a year and a half that the movie fell apart many times.

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