The truth about Michael Lehmann

Director Michael Lehmann has had an interesting, if not always smooth ride.

After a hugely successful feature debut with the indie classic Heathers, critics and audiences perhaps unjustly crucified him for his 1991 Bruce Willis action-comedy Hudson Hawk, and he fell off the Hollywood radar until his 1996 hit TheTruth About Cats and Dogs starring Janeane Garofolo and Uma Thurman.

His most recent project, the sexual abstinence comedy 40 Days and 40 Nights, is a solid, intelligent attempt at sex comedy in the wake of sophomoric crap like American Pie, Tomcats and Say it Isn’t So. According to Lehmann, the film was in the works before the recent craze for sex with pastries kicked in.

“The movie had its genesis before I knew anything about American Pie,” says Lehmann. “While we were in the middle of writing the script, American Pie was released, and the whole youth sex comedy genre came back. When the idea for this movie—a guy (Josh Hartnett) gives up sex for Lent—was pitched to me, I thought it was perfect, because nobody did sex comedies anymore. The subject had become uncomfortable in recent years for many reasons. Now, there’s a bunch of gross-out sex comedies on the market. … I tried to do a different take on the subject, to present it in a more intelligent vein.”

“In editing this film, I can tell you that sex is a very tricky terrain,” he continues. “There were many places where I thought we might be going a bit too far, and then there were other moments where I felt we weren’t going far enough. In the end, I think there is a blunt take on sex in this film that hasn’t been attempted in quite some time.”

Lehmann attributes the success of the picture to his cast, including Hartnett, whom he calls “a very sympathetic presence in the movie,” and former Reno resident Shannyn Sossamon, who made an immediate impression on the director.

“Shannyn had no real film experience at the time. She was shooting A Knight’s Tale in Prague, and I had never seen her in a movie. We had to go with what came across in the room during her audition, which was this great, sweet and very honest presence. Shannyn was in competition with some well-known actresses, and she had a quality that nobody else had. I think she and Josh are great on screen together.”

The film is shot and set in San Francisco, and while Lehmann was born and raised in the area, he had never filmed in the Bay Area during the course of his career.

“I wanted to see if we could get San Fran on film in a different way. You want to see the bay, the bridges, the hills, but there is a different side, the inner city, that the people who live there know more about than the average tourist … I wanted to get some of that on film.”

Finally, I ask Lehmann if he thinks Heathers, with its dark comic plot involving teens offing each other, could’ve been made today after of all the high school tragedies.

“No,” he says. “It wouldn’t have been made.” He also confirms that all of the Heathers 2 rumors are just Internet bullshit.

I throw in that I thought Hudson Hawk was a pretty good movie, to which he expresses some delight and personal affection for the film. When I ask if it will be re-released some day in a special, anniversary director’s cut edition, he has an instant reply.

“When I’m in my grave."