Along Came Polly John Hamburg's commentary for Along Came Polly, 2004
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The challenge with this [movie] was that people know that the movie is about Polly and Reuben and so it's like: 'How long can we take to get the two of them?' We did a lot of working in the cutting room trying to figure out that we have to set up Reuben's character and what he wants and he has to get dumped, all this stuff has to happen but then we have to jump-start the romantic part of the story when he meets Jennifer. So we kept making it shorter and shorter, the time until you actually meet Jennifer Aniston.

We used to introduce Jennifer a little later when she walks up to Reuben as he's leaving but we sort of wrote this scene afterwards (he's talking about the scene where Polly is pouring white wine in a glass filled with red wine) to kind of give Jennifer/Polly her own introduction. That's Missi Pyle (Roxanne) as Polly's best friend and we just recreated this set on a sound stage and the idea was to show that Polly's character had a bit of a romantic background. She says she's not looking for a boyfriend and she dated a guy for two days, and her friend says it's three months.

This was shot on the Lower East Side of New York on Ludlow Street. We only did three days of filming in New York for the entire movie. But this was actually our first day of shooting of the entire movie. All of us were nervous because this was their (Jen and Ben) first scene together and you don't know whether they'll click and play off each other. We'd rehearsed a few days in L.A. Really just a day or two, not too much. But I thought they got into a really nice rhythm right away. This scene is supposed to be awkward with a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding and I thought they played that really nicely. The key for Jennifer, I think, was when Reuben asks her out. You don't want her to be a jerk about turning him down. But you just want to be like, 'What's going on? Why is she saying no. She seems like she liked me and we're old friends.' So there's a bit of a mystery to her and I feel that she captured that.

This scene was one of the keys for me to Polly's character where you just saw that it wasn't like she was blowing him off, she's just sort of pathologically non-committal. That moment there is where you get the key to Polly's character, that she calls him up and asks for a date and in the next minute saying, 'I can't do it.' And you can't quite figure her out. That's what ultimately attracts Polly to Reuben.

Jennifer spit that out each time. We had what we called 'the eBay spit bucket' for both of them because they had to eat so much ethnic food and didn't want to swallow it. So they would take ..., put it in their mouth and then some guy'd come with this spit bucket, and they'd spit it out. Maybe I shouldn't reveal that, but that's the glamour behind big-budget Hollywood movie-making.

This is great because she shakes her head. I love when he says, 'It might be different if you found the right person.' She agrees, shaking her head, basically saying, 'There's no way.'

That's that scene. I love the performances in that scene because they keep it real and grounded. It's one of the scenes, that, as a comedy director, is fun to watch with an audience. You see the audience covering their eyes, not wanting to look and shouting out, 'Oh, no!'

I really love their performances in this scene. I think they're very natural and vulnerable. It's not a big set-piece funny scene. It's just a simple scene that sums up what I was trying to go for in the movie which is combining two tones. One is this big laugh-out-loud comedy, the second is a character comedy about these real people living in New York and just trying to make sense of their lives and make personal connection. And when you have really good actors, it certainly is helpful.

We didn't want Jennifer to look just the same as she does on Friends or some other movie she's been in. So we did a lot of work. Chris McMillan, who does her hair, did this brilliant thing with her hair. It's very subtle, but it looks different. It's not quite as washed. It maybe looks like she hasn't washed it for a few days or... She's got some extensions. It's not so neat. Her makeup artist, Valli O'Reilly, did some amazing things. Jennifer's eyes, for me, always pop in this movie. They're very subtle but I think she did some darker shadings around her eyes. And it's a different look, but in a subtle way. It's really cool. That, combined with her wardrobe, created this very specific character. Jennifer is someone you see everyday on TV. So you really have to work against that, which she is so up for. She doesn't wanna keep playing Rachel. I think she really succeeded at creating this unique character.

These kind of scenes are always tricky. The actors are very vulnerable. But they were both really cool and comfortable with each other. Here comes the spank. What can I say about that? It was a set-up from earlier where Sandy says women like to be spanked. And the idea was this guy hasn't been on a date in a long time, so he follows his friend's advice, doesn't really know what to do. It doesn't backfire because she's such a cool woman but it doesn't quite work out the way he planned.

This sex scene became much shorter due to the ratings board. So we went through a lot of variations of what he should say. And we ended up with this one, where he's counting down. Suddenly, things change and it looks like he might be finished and he's just got to count down. It was longer. We had other angles but we couldn't put them in for ratings. It's all leading up to this shot here where he shouts out 'fifty.' And then the audience is always kind of... [Polly says, [i]50? Yeah, 50![/i] in the movie] That was Jennifer's idea. I had always the scene on Ben's 'fifty' and she had this idea that she would be into that. And I wasn't sure. She did it and it was such a great moment. Certainly, in one of ... in our preview process the audience almost cheered. But they did cheer when she yells out 'fifty' because people think, 'Wow, this girl is so understanding.' Men think, 'I wish I could meet a girl like that, that if I make a mistake or something in bed, she just goes with it.'

This was a visual-effect shot. Earlier, Jennifer pours red wine into a white wine glass. That was a white wine glass, but we digitally changed this, so she would do it again. That was just a subtle thing that few people in the audience laugh at. It's just that she doesn't think about it. She's not that interested in her job.

Shooting-wise, this scene was quite a pain because every take we had to vacuum up all the down and feathers. So it took a long time to do. But I think their energy is really good in this scene. A lot of this was improv. Ben and I and Jennifer worked out some things he should say.

These kind of scenes are hard for actors because often the other actor isn't on the phone. They just have to play it, generally, with me. So I'm sitting behind the monitors on the phone, trying to be Ben and she's in the scene talking to Ben but listening to me. But they're good. They don't show you that that's what they're doing. I always was very happy with how they did that. It's disturbing, though. You would never want to actually hear how I tried to do Jennifer's character. It was embarrassing for everybody.

He just slams into the thing and Jennifer's got to react and that's what I think makes her character so winning, in part in this wonderful reaction that she has to his routine and also Ben's commitment to it. And here's one of my favorite moments in the movie this slow motion where there's nothing going on other then their faces. And Ben was showing pure joy. He's just totally into it and Jennifer melts. And I think she pulls it off, and I think he does, too.

At a lot of our previews, what was fun was you'd have people yelling out ... yelling at the screen and telling Lisa to get out of there. Or you'd see people turn to their neighbour and say: 'Oh, she's back.' That kind of thing. And you hope that that happens, that people are involved in the story.