Photos from Sony Pictures Classics The romantic comedy "Broken Hearts Club" focuses on Dennis' (Timothy Olyphant) search for self-awareness and his interactions with his friends.
By Emilia Hwang
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Whether or not you’ve spent the better days of your life folding jeans at Structure or listening to Karen Carpenter, you’ve probably experienced a broken heart or two. And whether they came to your rescue with the movie “Beaches” or a pint of Hagen Daaz, your friends have always been there to pick up the pieces.
Writer/director Greg Berlanti’s feature debut, “The Broken Hearts Club – a romantic comedy,” focuses on a group of gay men living in Los Angeles and how crucial their friendships are to one another as they strive to become independent and find a sense of personal identity.
“Friends are just like family,” Berlanti said at a recent interview.
The film is centered around Dennis (Timothy Olyphant), a photographer who reflects on his life when he turns 28. In his search for self-awareness, he becomes more conscious of the support he receives from his friends, as well as the challenges they pose.
Berlanti uses universal themes of romance and comedy to present a group of friends that do not differ too much from a group of straight men.
“There’s no film like this that deals with these kinds of friends – friends who happen to be gay,” Berlanti said.
Dean Cain plays Cole in “Broken Hearts Club,” which opens today. Homosexuality may seem like an unlikely perspective for a romantic comedy, but Berlanti hoped to fill that void in gay cinema by making a movie about everyday life.
“I hadn’t seen a film that had been about gay men that seemed regular and fun,” Berlanti said.
While told from a gay perspective, the movie explores familiar themes of guilt, jealousy and love, and according to Berlanti, could just as easily be a heterosexual movie.
“The tendency is to look more for a statement because it is about a minority, but I never saw it as such,” he said. “It was just my own experiences and they seemed so regular and average to me.”
The film evades stock gay characters and stereotypes in favor of multifaceted personalities.
“A lot of people use the word stereotypes because it’s been thrown around so much because there really have been stereotype sort of characters,” Berlanti said. “Now I think we’re moving more toward personalities, and that’s what real characters are to me.”
For Olyphant, playing Dennis offered him a rare experience as far as being the lead character.
“I tend to think that lead characters are the most boring people in the movie,” Olyphant said. “This is not the case here. (Dennis) had a great deal of range and fun.”
While other characters seemed to have their quirky hook, Dennis was just hoping to transition smoothly into his 30s. He is not as flamboyant as Taylor (Billy Porter) or as gorgeous as Cole (Dean Cain).
Sony Pictures Classics (Left to right) Matt McGrath, Ben Weber, and Zach Braff star in "Broken Hearts Club - a romantic comedy."
“Everybody else had their little niche,” Olyphant said. “And I felt that Dennis had an opportunity to go everywhere in-between.”
One of Dennis’s romantic interests is the group’s “Newbie,” Kevin (Andrew Keegan). As a recently “out” gay man, Kevin is especially sweet, inexperienced and destined for heartbreak.
“He’s innocent, very naïve to this whole world that he’s coming into,” Keegan said.
For Keegan, playing the young Kevin offered him a new experience.
Keegan admits that he was too busy to read the script close enough to realize how intimate he would get with co-star Dean Cain.
“So I read it again,” Keegan said. “And of course, there were kissing scenes.”
After all, what would a romance be without a few intimate love scenes?
“The kiss was real simple,” Keegan said. “It wasn’t too bad at all.”
The challenges of casting heterosexual actors as gay characters was not a problem.
“(Berlanti) knew how to work with actors,” Keegan said. “It was fun because we were all in on the same experience. He was the leader, and we were all going in on this together.”
According to Keegan, any hesitation reserved for playing a gay character was dismissed by Berlanti’s openness while filming.
“He was great,” Keegan said. “He was the kind of director who really took the time to talk everything out, to make sure that you were very comfortable with whatever you were doing.”
According to Berlanti, the focus of the film isn’t sexual preference. Beyond the concerns of gay culture is an ordinary story about friendship.
“Everyone has a certain amount of liberation and warmth from watching the film,” Berlanti said. “I’ve been resistant in every step of the way of just pigeonholing myself (as a gay writer) and yet the opportunities come up and they just feel like the right thing to do.”
Far from appealing strictly to gay audiences, Berlanti’s work includes the TV show “Dawson’s Creek” and the upcoming film “Her Leading Man.”
“When I wrote the story (for “Broken Hearts”), I hadn’t sold a script in my life,” he said. “I wasn’t really writing it for any other reason than to try to write something that was true and real to me.”
FILM: “The Broken Hearts Club – a romantic comedy” opens today in theaters nationwide.