Andy Tennant has always been led by the strong women in his life.
The American filmmaker and screenwriter is certainly an expert in the rom-com department, having helmed 2002’s Sweet Home Alabama with Reese Witherspoon and the Will Smith-led Hitch in 2005, two undeniable titans of the genre.
But for Tennant, who also directed 2008’s Fool’s Gold and 2010’s The Bounty Hunter, his latest project has never encompassed that connection to female resilience so well. “I’ve always felt in literature and everything else that female characters are so much more interesting than male characters, especially in movies,” he begins to The Hollywood Reporter. “Because male characters and [male] movie stars, their character doesn’t learn anything. Women’s stories… They’re so much more. They’re allowed to be eager, to be more vulnerable, to be more curious. And those stories I’m naturally drawn to.”
It’s befitting, then, that The Fun Lady — produced by Highland Film Group and headed to AFM — is not only getting the Andy Tennant treatment, but honoring one of the wildest true stories in the sex-toy industry. Linda Brewer, then 59, was the subject of a New York Times Magazine story in 2004 titled “Everything a Happily Married Bible Belt Woman Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Was Afraid to Ask.” It chronicles her rise from Arkansas high school dropout to becoming one of the top sellers for Passion Parties, a California-based company whose products included edible lotions, sex manuals, erotic games, lingerie and, crucially, an array of vibrators. Sure, she made sales of up to $140,000 in a single year, but Brewer also did the unthinkable: Smashed taboos and empowered the sex-curious, unsatisfied women of the Bible Belt.
In The Fun Lady, Brewer is depicted by superstar Jessica Alba (also producing the feature under her Metalmark Entertainment banner). She plays golden girl Mora, who retreats to her parents’ small Arkansas hometown when her picture-perfect life falls apart. Here, jobs are scarce, and gossip is a way of life. Desperate for a fresh start, she begins selling sex toys. The only problem is her absolute ignorance about pleasure, having never experienced an orgasm. Against all odds, Mora becomes “The Fun Lady,” crashing living rooms, shocking church ladies, and turning awkward sales parties into the hottest invitation in town. Along the way, she ignites a sexual revolution among women who have spent their lives pretending everything is fine.
Tennant, upon reading Mark Steilen’s (Tag, Shameless) script, was instantly hooked. “I thought, ‘You got to be kidding me!’” he recalls, chuckling to THR. “It’s such a lovely movie.” It’s not a romantic comedy, but he believed it to be very Sweet Home Alabama-adjacent. “The fact that it was based on a true story… I just found it incredible, and what a great jumping-off point for a story about not only human sexuality but relationships and the suppression of female sexual identity.” Importantly, for Tennant, it isn’t “comedy with a capital C.” The Fun Lady grapples with the human condition and the relationships that inform it, which, for him, “is what I’ve tried to do in pretty much every movie I’ve done.”
With production set to kick off early next year, Tennant is relieved to have a professional like Alba on board. “Casting has basically made my job a whole lot easier,” he says, reflecting on the myriad of A-listers that have stood in front of his camera. “[The Fun Lady] doesn’t need to cost any more than it’s going to cost. But we needed somebody who really got the material and understood that it wasn’t going to be a comedy with a bunch of cheap laughs. And Jessica, in my first conversation with her, [I could tell] she’s incredibly smart.”
Alba is not unlike the real-life person her role is inspired by: tenacious and a natural businesswoman. “She’s an entrepreneur,” Tennant continues. “She’s made an enormous success out of her business [consumer goods brand The Honest Company], and her conversations with me were [I was] like, ‘Oh, wow, I really need to be on my toes here.’ Because she takes it incredibly seriously. It is a comedy but there’s an awful lot of thematic issues that she really wants to bring to the fore,” he says, for example, women’s sexuality and marriages that play out “in a selfish way.”
Tennant is more than happy to let Alba — and a slew of cast members THR is not yet privy to the identities of — take the lead. “This is not false humility, but most of the time I try and stay out of the way,” he explains. “I set the camera and create an environment where everybody feels safe and willing to try things, and lot of what I love about prep actually is the conversations that happen with all the individual characters about what they’re thinking, what they’re afraid of, what they’re not sure of, and it challenges me.” Rather poetically, he actually likens the experience to heading up an orchestra: “We’ve got the bassoon and we’ve got the double bass and we’ve got the French horn and the violin. What we’re trying to create is a group that when they’re all together, has a wonderful harmony.”
What would have been a real weapon at their disposal during the shoot is the input of Brewer, who Tennant confirms has passed away. Although, he says, she was involved “quite a lot” with Steilen during the writing process. “Mark pursued the story. He spoke to her many, many times. And I know that her children are still very much wanting to see this movie made,” says the filmmaker.
And with Alba, he’s attempted to honor Brewer’s legacy by fleshing out the women of this story as much as possible. “We’ve tried to expand on the many women and the passion parties — no two are alike,” Tennant maintains. “The relationships are different. Their issues are different, and so we wanted to explore a lot of that. Somebody might not relate to Jessica’s character as much as they might relate to somebody else, and go, ‘Oh, I was there once in that relationship,’ or ‘I’m still in it.’ It doesn’t matter if it’s 1988 or 2000 or 2027. Sometimes, it’s hard to say what you want, say what you need, and it definitely affects your relationship.”
And if he’s honest with himself? Tennant didn’t have very many edits at all. “I actually said to Mark, ‘This is one of the few scripts that I’ve ever been offered that I haven’t had to do a ton of triage or work or rewrite or bring in other writers.’ In this case,” he adds, “the material was really, really strong.”
And when Tennant, the man behind the onscreen love affairs of Matthew Perry and Salma Hayek (in Fools Rush In) or Drew Barrymore and Dougray Scott (Ever After), casts his mind back to some of his favorite comedies of all time, such as Tootsie or the work of Sydney Pollack and Mike Nichols, what gives them their standout status is that unsuspecting warmth — and vital messaging — underneath those layers of fun and frill. “If I can just aspire to that level of intimacy and honesty and humor and real, honest character work…” says Tennant, trailing off. “If you laugh, you laugh. But maybe you’ll leave the theater thinking a little bit more about your relationship.”
