Katie Anne Naylon co-wrote the script for FOR A GOOD TIME CALL… with her real-life best friend, Lauren Miller. While Miller plays the character of Lauren in the film, Naylon demurred, preferring to let Ari Graynor play the part based on Naylon herself. It was one of the first things I asked about when I spoke with her and the film’s director, Jamie Travis, on August 14, 2012. The idea, after all, of operating a phone sex line was something out of Naylon’s life, from when she ran one out of her college dorm room. Her answer revealed a woman who put the project ahead of her ego. And how delighted she was to get to know Graynor, who has achieved Youtube immorality where resides a popular clip of her drunken and disoriented character from Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist asks a total stranger for a turkey sandwich.
The conversation also included the integral part Lady Gaga has played in putting the film together, though it’s unlikely that the singer was aware of it at the time, why so much of the film’s action takes place indoors, and the subversive way that the film’s characters don’t define themselves by their personal relationships with men.
FOR A GOOD TIME CALL… is a story about pluck, initiative and getting past bad first impressions. Ari Graynor plays Katie, the occupant of a dream apartment in Grammercy Park and staunch frenemy of Lauren, played by Lauren Miller. When Katie’s rent goes up, and Lauren’s boyfriend dumps her, the two are brought reluctantly together by a mutual friend, played by Justin Long, and, after Lauren learns the shocking truth Katie makes her living working a phone sex line, they both discover that they each offer the other more than half the rent. The film co-stars Mark Webber, Don McManus and Mimi Rogers, and was directed by Travis from a script by Miller and Naylon.
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