"Wedding Wars," the romantic comedy about gay marraige debuting on A&E Monday night, has been getting a whole lot of publicity because it stars two of the hottest prime-time docs on television: John Stamos ("ER") and Eric Dane ("Grey's Anatomy.) Stamos plays a gay man who works as an event planner and is asked to plan his brother's wedding to the daughter of a conservative governor. When the governor comes out against same-sex marriage, Stamos' character goes on a very public strike.
I chatted with the movie's accomplished director, Jim Fall ("Trick," "The Lizzie McGuire Movie" and TV's "Grosse Pointe"), last week about the movie and his stars.
"The movie really should be in theaters, it was written to be," he says. "But luckily A&E had the smarts to snap it up and make it because I'm not sure it would ever get made as a theatrical film. But the timing is really great on every level, just politically to our two lead actors being so popular (laughs). We shot this back in May and Eric had just done one episode of "Grey's Anatomy" and John hadn't started "ER" yet."
Fall, who turns 44 this week, made a name for himself with the 1999 gay indie classic "Trick" which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. He believes that the movie works on a pure entertainment level but also sends some important messages.
"I hope it just humanizes the issue of equal rights," he says. "It's a movie about equal rights but first and foremost, I wanted it to be entertaining, I wanted it to be funny and I wanted it to be heartfelt. I think the way to win anyone over, if they are going to be won over, is through humor and humanity. That's why I think this movie was so perfectly conceived is because it's a comedy first and it's entertaining and if you just walk away with that, that's great. If you come away thinking, 'Yeah, maybe everyone does deserve equal rights' even better."
The production had even more meaning for Fall as he and his husband, Juan King, got married on the set of the movie last spring, in Canada, where same-gender marraige is legal. "John Stamos and Bonnie and Sean and Mark and the rest of the cast came to our reception at the one bar in Halifax and it was really fun."
Said King: "I was the wedding planner!"