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Sexual healing >> Director Don Roos avoids the clichés with The Opposite of Sex by MATTHEW HAYS
Roos is getting nothing short of critical raves for The Opposite of Sex, his hilarious take on the effect one sexually precocious 16 year old (played by Christina Ricci) has on a gay household. After Ricci's step-father dies, Roos' script has her dropping in on her half-brother (Martin Donovan), a gay teacher she's only met once. Friends' Lisa Kudrow, in a brilliant performance, plays Donovan's protective and anal best friend, who's suspicious of Ricci from the get-go. And, as it turns out, rightfully so. Ricci has soon seduced Donovan's live-in lover (the sultry Ivan Sergei), claiming within weeks that the formerly-gay stud has impregnated her. She and Sergei then elope, stealing a few grand from Donovan. A bizarre road chase ensues. Part of the charm of The Opposite of Sex is Roos' ability to meld so many different styles: the film is equal parts soap opera, screwball comedy, romance and sitcom, with more plot twists than Sleuth and Deathtrap combined. "The mixing of styles is just how my mind works," explains Roos. "I'm glad people are finding it unpredictable. It's so discouraging to sit in a movie theatre and know exactly where you're going. I find that a real waste of time, when you see the creaky plot devices in place it's a drag. This movie is a bit of a ride, and I just hope we keep surprising people." Roos managed to take the director's chair after over 15 years as a successful writer for TV and the movies (his screenplays include Single White Female, Boys on the Side and the remake Diabolique). But Roos reached a low with his first stab at directing: he was set to shoot Easy Women, a script he'd written, when Meg Ryan pulled out of the project for reasons unknown a mere eight weeks before the cameras were supposed to roll. "She just phoned up and said, 'I'm out.' There was a whole period of lawsuits, and it was a really bad time, and I took to my bed as is my wont. I just sat there and this idea for the movie came to me--at the time, just an image of this girl throwing a chair onto a coffin [an image which finds its way into the final cut of the film]. Then you build on that, answering questions like 'who's the girl? Who's in the grave?' It just spun out from there." Roos' storyline has great flair, but the film is also predicated on solid, dimensional characters. "I wanted to make a movie about people I knew. When I go to the movies I don't recognize a lot of the people up there. They seem to be wishful thinking, or fantasies, like ideas of people, but not real people." Roos has a complex ensemble, full of people gay, straight and bisexual, consistently managing to avoid condescending positive image portrayals of any one minority. "I hate the earnest kind of stuff. Like Sidney Poitier's early roles, where he had to be a saint to be anything at all. I just don't go for that. I prefer to tell it like it is. Trouble is, there are a lot of voices in the gay community who want to see nothing but positive images. And well-meaning, liberal straight friends who are very concerned with healthy, positive gay images. It's not my fight, it's not anything I'm interested in." But Roos maintains, in fact, that The Opposite of Sex has a deeply moral line running through it. "Not only is it moral, it's also very conservative. What it's saying is that sex matters, it's also saying that it counts who you sleep with, it's a life-changing act. It's sort of the opposite of a free-love movie. All these actions are highly significant and have real consequences." Now Roos is basking in the glory of glowing reviews and the resulting box office bonanza. "It's surprised me, because I thought I was just making a movie for me and my friends. We beat Godzilla on a per-screen basis during the Memorial Day weekend [in the U.S.]. I'm such a geek I ran over to the theatre near my house where the movie is playing and photographed the 'sold out' sign. I couldn't believe it!" The Opposite of Sex opens Friday, June 19
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The directorial debut of Los Angeles screenwriter Don Roos will come as a relief to those cinemaphiles sick of Hollywood's glossy depictions of sex. "The only thing we know about sex from the movies," declares Roos, "is that apparently, it's always incredibly fun. And if you're in a relationship, you should have it--and want it--constantly. Sex is simply far more complicated than that."