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The Real Deal: Lars and the Real Girl Writer Nancy Oliver Talks About Her Wondrous Creation
Expanded Edition of 4-30-08 Windy City Times Interview
by Richard Knight, Jr.
Expanded Edition of 4-30-08 Windy City Times Interview
by Richard Knight, Jr.
Writer Nancy Oliver and Ryan Gosling as Lars with new girlfriend "Bianca."
Screenwriter Nancy Oliver hit the jackpot with Lars and the Real Girl, her first screenplay. Not only was Lars embraced by critics but
Oliver’s script received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Lars, portrayed by indie darling Ryan Gosling, is a man so
introverted and alone that when he orders a life-like sex doll off the internet (which he names Bianca) he is convinced that she’s
real. Miraculously, the rest of the small town supports Lars’ delusion with compassion and understanding. What sounds like a dirty
joke instead becomes a sweet, off the wall comedy with believe it or not shades of It’s a Wonderful Life. Lars and the Real Girl was
recently released by MGM DVD.
The soft spoken, 50 something Oliver has waited a long time for the acclaim and was about to give up the writing game when
longtime friend, writer-director-producer Alan Ball, hired her to work on his HBO series “Six Feet Under” in 2001. Oliver’s script for
Lars made the rounds for several years before finally getting made. Next she’s working on HBO’s new, highly anticipated vampire
series “True Blood,” which debuts this August. Excerpts from her conversation with Windy City Times:
WINDY CITY TIMES (WCT): I have a great something to tell you that I think is going to make you happy.
NANCY OLIVER (NO): Oh yes?
WCT: I missed Lars in the theatres and couldn’t wait to watch the DVD screener. I went away with my partner for the weekend to
visit my elderly, conservative parents and we watched it with them.
NO: (laughing) Oh boy…
WCT: So we had two liberal homosexuals and two conservative Republicans in their 70s watching Lars and the Real Girl and I have to
tell you that we ALL loved it.
NO: How bizarre is that, huh?
WCT: Isn’t that? I mean, how do you account for that? My mother was recommending this on the phone the next day to her
friends; my dad, too, and there I am telling my brother-in-law that it’s a great movie for him to watch with his teenage daughter.
And I was serious.
NO: I know, it’s crazy – it’s getting promoted on Christian websites and (laughs) I think it’s hilarious.
WCT: I’m guessing you’ve been hearing stories like this since the moment it first opened. How do you account for this widespread
appeal?
NO: I think because my goal…well, that’s not true because I don’t really have any goals (laughs) but what I was trying for was the
basic human emotions, needs that really transcend all the Republican stuff, all the homosexual stuff – it’s just about being human
and I think that once people get over the fear that he’s going to do something with the doll and you enter that world that you
connect with the humanity of it. I hope that’s what happens anyway.
WCT: Well that’s certainly what happened with us.
NO: That was quite a risk to take with your parents.
WCT: Well, they’re used to my saying, “Well, let’s just try something a little different” and I am pleased to report that it worked like
nothing’s ever worked before – like 100%.
NO: That’s really rewarding to me; I’m really grateful. I mean because it’s a movie about community; about people coming
together and if it happens even just watching the movie that’s pretty cool.
WCT: Yes. I also love the idea that you put forward that treating the delusion with compassion instead of misunderstanding and
prescription drugs. That’s almost a revolutionary idea. Where did that come from?
NO: Well I’ve spent a lot of time – professional and personal – with people with mental illness and with something like a delusion
there’s nothing you can do anyway. Either you accept it or you stop dealing with that person and it’s very much a fable and a “what
if?” kind of story and I wanted to explore compassion and kindness. There was no other way of dealing with Lars. They would either
accept it or throw him out and I’m on the side of compassion so I just gave it a shot and you saw how it turned out.
WCT: Well it really worked for me.
NO: Well thank you. I think, too, that something that’s moving about the movie if you’re one of the people who likes it, is that a
simple human kindness is powerful.
WCT: Is it insulting to ask if that’s a feminist point of view?
NO: Not at all.
WCT: I ask because that reminds me that years ago when I interviewed Laura Nyro she said, “In a feminist world everything would
be rounder and softer and kinder.”
NO: I don’t know if that’s true. I’m certainly a feminist but I don’t know that if women in charge would fix everything but I did have
a sort of matriarchal thing going on in the script for sure. Although it’s funny, a lot of people have zeroed in on the sex doll and
said, “Oh, this represents the condition of leading women in film today” but they ignored the strong parts for women that were in
there. I would say, rather than a feminist thing it’s definitely from a feminine perspective.
WCT: I certainly picked up on that. In a way it reminded me of my favorite writer Shirley Jackson.
NO: I’m not familiar.
WCT: She wrote “The Haunting” and “The Lottery” and—
NO: Oh, Shirley Jackson, I didn’t catch the name. Oh yes, I’m very familiar with her.
WCT: Yes. She would take the everyday and make it seem very unusual and the women were always the stronger characters. The
movie plays like a poetic novel.
NO: (surprised) You think so?
WCT: Oh yes, very much so. Is that somewhere on your agenda, a book?
NO: No. Absolutely not. I’m the worst fiction writer in the world. I’m terrible and that’s where I started. You know, even when I’m
reading books I’m always skipping forward to where people start talking. I think dialogue is really my niche but you know,
inbetween, especially with a screenplay, you have all those stage directions that do become kind of novel-like and this particular
director, Craig Gillespie, paid a lot of attention to that so I think it’s kind of leaked its way into the movie. I am a terrible fiction
writer, though.
WCT: Me too. I’m writing for a GLBT audience so I have a couple of specific questions in that area. Lars is asked early on
specifically if he’s gay and he flatly denies it but at the end of the movie I thought to myself, “You know, his journey mirrors a
coming out process.” It was sort of like my own – everyone around me was ready to accept my sexuality before I was.
NO: (laughs) I know how that happens when someone says, “I’m gay” and everybody goes, “Uh, yeah…”
WCT: “Duh!” Do you mind if gay people have this interpretation? I mean we’re used to projecting anyway (laughs)?
NO: No I don’t mind at all because it’s about rebirth. It’s about resurrection and redemption and no, I hope and always did, that
people would connect to it on every level. It should resonate on many levels so I’m thrilled and I can see where that happens. It
wasn’t in my mind, “This is for gay people” but to make that human connection certainly was. Everybody’s got their own thing and I
hope that that’s what Lars addresses.
WCT: Do you think his psychological condition would have been met with such support from everybody if he had been gay and had
ordered a male doll?
NO: You know those never sold well (we both laugh). I think it would have been an entirely different film one that I didn’t feel
capable of writing.
WCT: As I suspected. I think I knew the answer to that question before I asked it but there’s always that wishful thing I have like
in the movie Big Eden, “Oh, everyone will want him to meet some nice young man and settle down.”
NO: I know, it’s true.
WCT: Lars sort of finds a security blanket in Bianca (the doll). There’s a sense of Linus with his security blanket. It’s a device that
allows everyone to finally see him and connect with him through her it seemed to me.
NO: I would agree. I think it’s how we learn as human beings. We learn from play and we learn through functioning with toys and
by pretending and Lars had never had a chance to do that as a child but in order to learn we need to do it at some point. It just hit
him in his late 20s. I think also that’s something people understand at a subliminal level and it’s something they respond to and
what other way does he have to learn because nobody’s teaching him.
WCT: Right. How do you have such insight to a character like this? Has there been a Lars in your life?
NO: There have been pieces. He’s an amalgam as well as entirely his own thing. I think, too, that we all have a piece of Lars in
us. He wasn’t based on a specific person but there are definitely people in my life and parts of myself that are expressed through
this character.
WCT: I think he’s a great representation of a lot of performers as well where you need the Bianca character to shield you from the
real person.
NO: Exactly. Without Bianca obviously he wasn’t able to communicate. It was too raw and too painful but through her, he has a
vehicle to connect.
WCT: I want to have a screening party and show Lars as part of a double feature.
NO: (delighted) Oh yeah, what is the other movie?
WCT: I don’t know, you’ve got to tell me – what goes with it?
NO: Oh Lordy, I have no idea! Something Scandinavian.
WCT: Fanny & Alexander perhaps?
NO: That one is a little long, personally, I’d have to leave in the middle. I have no idea. One of those dogma films maybe.
WCT: I actually was thinking Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.
NO: To Washington?
WCT: No, the one with Gary Cooper playing the tuba. Where the whole town is filled with eccentrics. Jean Arthur is in it. It’s a great
Capra film; very sweet.
NO: Oooh, that one I’m not familiar with. It sounds great.
WCT: It really is. Your personal story is extremely inspiring to me – almost hanging it up as a writer and then being saved at the
last minute. I read that you were literally packing your boxes getting ready to move when you got this call for a writing job. Then
there’s working on Six Feet Under, your first screenplay gets an Oscar nomination, all at that “certain age.” Does it finally feel like
you’re on the other side?
NO: You know what? I don’t think I’ll ever get over the other years. The 27 years when I didn’t have anything except my friends, of
course. I still go to the grocery store and I see that “Help Wanted” sign in the window and I think to myself, “I could do that.” So I’
m not sure that I’ll ever feel that I’m on the other side. The other part went on, do you know what I mean?
WCT: I’m still going through it as so many people are. Yes, yes I do.
NO: And the Oscar part is still not real to me. I mean I went through it and everything and people talk about it but it seems like a
dream or something that happened to somebody else. So I’m not sure that I’ll ever feel safe or successful but I don’t necessarily
think that’s a bad thing. I think, “Stay hungry.”
Oliver’s script received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Lars, portrayed by indie darling Ryan Gosling, is a man so
introverted and alone that when he orders a life-like sex doll off the internet (which he names Bianca) he is convinced that she’s
real. Miraculously, the rest of the small town supports Lars’ delusion with compassion and understanding. What sounds like a dirty
joke instead becomes a sweet, off the wall comedy with believe it or not shades of It’s a Wonderful Life. Lars and the Real Girl was
recently released by MGM DVD.
The soft spoken, 50 something Oliver has waited a long time for the acclaim and was about to give up the writing game when
longtime friend, writer-director-producer Alan Ball, hired her to work on his HBO series “Six Feet Under” in 2001. Oliver’s script for
Lars made the rounds for several years before finally getting made. Next she’s working on HBO’s new, highly anticipated vampire
series “True Blood,” which debuts this August. Excerpts from her conversation with Windy City Times:
WINDY CITY TIMES (WCT): I have a great something to tell you that I think is going to make you happy.
NANCY OLIVER (NO): Oh yes?
WCT: I missed Lars in the theatres and couldn’t wait to watch the DVD screener. I went away with my partner for the weekend to
visit my elderly, conservative parents and we watched it with them.
NO: (laughing) Oh boy…
WCT: So we had two liberal homosexuals and two conservative Republicans in their 70s watching Lars and the Real Girl and I have to
tell you that we ALL loved it.
NO: How bizarre is that, huh?
WCT: Isn’t that? I mean, how do you account for that? My mother was recommending this on the phone the next day to her
friends; my dad, too, and there I am telling my brother-in-law that it’s a great movie for him to watch with his teenage daughter.
And I was serious.
NO: I know, it’s crazy – it’s getting promoted on Christian websites and (laughs) I think it’s hilarious.
WCT: I’m guessing you’ve been hearing stories like this since the moment it first opened. How do you account for this widespread
appeal?
NO: I think because my goal…well, that’s not true because I don’t really have any goals (laughs) but what I was trying for was the
basic human emotions, needs that really transcend all the Republican stuff, all the homosexual stuff – it’s just about being human
and I think that once people get over the fear that he’s going to do something with the doll and you enter that world that you
connect with the humanity of it. I hope that’s what happens anyway.
WCT: Well that’s certainly what happened with us.
NO: That was quite a risk to take with your parents.
WCT: Well, they’re used to my saying, “Well, let’s just try something a little different” and I am pleased to report that it worked like
nothing’s ever worked before – like 100%.
NO: That’s really rewarding to me; I’m really grateful. I mean because it’s a movie about community; about people coming
together and if it happens even just watching the movie that’s pretty cool.
WCT: Yes. I also love the idea that you put forward that treating the delusion with compassion instead of misunderstanding and
prescription drugs. That’s almost a revolutionary idea. Where did that come from?
NO: Well I’ve spent a lot of time – professional and personal – with people with mental illness and with something like a delusion
there’s nothing you can do anyway. Either you accept it or you stop dealing with that person and it’s very much a fable and a “what
if?” kind of story and I wanted to explore compassion and kindness. There was no other way of dealing with Lars. They would either
accept it or throw him out and I’m on the side of compassion so I just gave it a shot and you saw how it turned out.
WCT: Well it really worked for me.
NO: Well thank you. I think, too, that something that’s moving about the movie if you’re one of the people who likes it, is that a
simple human kindness is powerful.
WCT: Is it insulting to ask if that’s a feminist point of view?
NO: Not at all.
WCT: I ask because that reminds me that years ago when I interviewed Laura Nyro she said, “In a feminist world everything would
be rounder and softer and kinder.”
NO: I don’t know if that’s true. I’m certainly a feminist but I don’t know that if women in charge would fix everything but I did have
a sort of matriarchal thing going on in the script for sure. Although it’s funny, a lot of people have zeroed in on the sex doll and
said, “Oh, this represents the condition of leading women in film today” but they ignored the strong parts for women that were in
there. I would say, rather than a feminist thing it’s definitely from a feminine perspective.
WCT: I certainly picked up on that. In a way it reminded me of my favorite writer Shirley Jackson.
NO: I’m not familiar.
WCT: She wrote “The Haunting” and “The Lottery” and—
NO: Oh, Shirley Jackson, I didn’t catch the name. Oh yes, I’m very familiar with her.
WCT: Yes. She would take the everyday and make it seem very unusual and the women were always the stronger characters. The
movie plays like a poetic novel.
NO: (surprised) You think so?
WCT: Oh yes, very much so. Is that somewhere on your agenda, a book?
NO: No. Absolutely not. I’m the worst fiction writer in the world. I’m terrible and that’s where I started. You know, even when I’m
reading books I’m always skipping forward to where people start talking. I think dialogue is really my niche but you know,
inbetween, especially with a screenplay, you have all those stage directions that do become kind of novel-like and this particular
director, Craig Gillespie, paid a lot of attention to that so I think it’s kind of leaked its way into the movie. I am a terrible fiction
writer, though.
WCT: Me too. I’m writing for a GLBT audience so I have a couple of specific questions in that area. Lars is asked early on
specifically if he’s gay and he flatly denies it but at the end of the movie I thought to myself, “You know, his journey mirrors a
coming out process.” It was sort of like my own – everyone around me was ready to accept my sexuality before I was.
NO: (laughs) I know how that happens when someone says, “I’m gay” and everybody goes, “Uh, yeah…”
WCT: “Duh!” Do you mind if gay people have this interpretation? I mean we’re used to projecting anyway (laughs)?
NO: No I don’t mind at all because it’s about rebirth. It’s about resurrection and redemption and no, I hope and always did, that
people would connect to it on every level. It should resonate on many levels so I’m thrilled and I can see where that happens. It
wasn’t in my mind, “This is for gay people” but to make that human connection certainly was. Everybody’s got their own thing and I
hope that that’s what Lars addresses.
WCT: Do you think his psychological condition would have been met with such support from everybody if he had been gay and had
ordered a male doll?
NO: You know those never sold well (we both laugh). I think it would have been an entirely different film one that I didn’t feel
capable of writing.
WCT: As I suspected. I think I knew the answer to that question before I asked it but there’s always that wishful thing I have like
in the movie Big Eden, “Oh, everyone will want him to meet some nice young man and settle down.”
NO: I know, it’s true.
WCT: Lars sort of finds a security blanket in Bianca (the doll). There’s a sense of Linus with his security blanket. It’s a device that
allows everyone to finally see him and connect with him through her it seemed to me.
NO: I would agree. I think it’s how we learn as human beings. We learn from play and we learn through functioning with toys and
by pretending and Lars had never had a chance to do that as a child but in order to learn we need to do it at some point. It just hit
him in his late 20s. I think also that’s something people understand at a subliminal level and it’s something they respond to and
what other way does he have to learn because nobody’s teaching him.
WCT: Right. How do you have such insight to a character like this? Has there been a Lars in your life?
NO: There have been pieces. He’s an amalgam as well as entirely his own thing. I think, too, that we all have a piece of Lars in
us. He wasn’t based on a specific person but there are definitely people in my life and parts of myself that are expressed through
this character.
WCT: I think he’s a great representation of a lot of performers as well where you need the Bianca character to shield you from the
real person.
NO: Exactly. Without Bianca obviously he wasn’t able to communicate. It was too raw and too painful but through her, he has a
vehicle to connect.
WCT: I want to have a screening party and show Lars as part of a double feature.
NO: (delighted) Oh yeah, what is the other movie?
WCT: I don’t know, you’ve got to tell me – what goes with it?
NO: Oh Lordy, I have no idea! Something Scandinavian.
WCT: Fanny & Alexander perhaps?
NO: That one is a little long, personally, I’d have to leave in the middle. I have no idea. One of those dogma films maybe.
WCT: I actually was thinking Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.
NO: To Washington?
WCT: No, the one with Gary Cooper playing the tuba. Where the whole town is filled with eccentrics. Jean Arthur is in it. It’s a great
Capra film; very sweet.
NO: Oooh, that one I’m not familiar with. It sounds great.
WCT: It really is. Your personal story is extremely inspiring to me – almost hanging it up as a writer and then being saved at the
last minute. I read that you were literally packing your boxes getting ready to move when you got this call for a writing job. Then
there’s working on Six Feet Under, your first screenplay gets an Oscar nomination, all at that “certain age.” Does it finally feel like
you’re on the other side?
NO: You know what? I don’t think I’ll ever get over the other years. The 27 years when I didn’t have anything except my friends, of
course. I still go to the grocery store and I see that “Help Wanted” sign in the window and I think to myself, “I could do that.” So I’
m not sure that I’ll ever feel that I’m on the other side. The other part went on, do you know what I mean?
WCT: I’m still going through it as so many people are. Yes, yes I do.
NO: And the Oscar part is still not real to me. I mean I went through it and everything and people talk about it but it seems like a
dream or something that happened to somebody else. So I’m not sure that I’ll ever feel safe or successful but I don’t necessarily
think that’s a bad thing. I think, “Stay hungry.”
Robert Durell/LA Times