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Earlier in your career you had a presence in TV. Do you intend going back to TV now that there is such a boom in higher-caliber TV writing?

Well certainly if I were to do TV it would have to be [cable]. If you are a writer now, that’s where you want to be obviously. Yes, there are certain exceptions – Modern Family is great writing, but a lot of it isn’t. There is so much that is good in cable and if I were to do it, that’s how I would. I haven’t talked about it yet, I’ve been lucky enough to make the movies I want to make and I will continue. On the other hand, there are some detractors of television. Just doing it week after week and getting it out in front of so many people, that’s pretty heavy.

Do you prefer writing for television?

Whenever I write for film, I prefer writing for television. When I write for television, I prefer writing for film (laughs).

I loved the soundtrack of the movie. How did that come together?

It was an opportunity to be eclectic. Composer James Newton Howard, who I’ve worked with a lot, does great orchestral stuff; so have Hans Zimmer and James Horner. But to have a contemporary soundtrack was a different opportunity I felt again changed things up in a way I wanted to.

Nowadays everything is available … at a click on the computer. Music supervisors might say, let me give you 50 cuts that might be interesting for this part and you’d go, “OK.” (laughs). That’s always fun. Something is either working or not and music always makes it better.

The ‘90s were an interesting moment in music history. Not the best moment, so to find stuff that is evocative of it, my favorite is when we do the Macarena! That just puts you right there. It is unmistakably that moment and no other.

I think that there might be more nudity in this than in any other romantic comedy.

Does that mean I get into The Guinness Book of World Records?

How did the actors, who obviously signed up for it, react?

We wanted there to be authenticity in the movie in every aspect. The people with Parkinson’s who talk about the drugs in that one scene have Parkinson’s. The relationship between Jamie and Maggie we wanted to have a beating heart of truth. In my humble experience, when two young people meet and are really into each other, they are naked a lot. And not always fucking. They are talking. But I wanted to have that feel to it. And by the way, I think you have to exclude European films from that record, because it is not so surprising in those.

Were there any suggestions to choreograph the scenes to be less graphic?

It felt so coy. And I didn’t want to be coy. I wanted to be straightforward and [Anne and Jake] got it. They understood. I didn’t want it to be exploitative. If you look at the movie closely, each sex scene is a marker of something. It is about how they get closer, how they are having trouble, what they get through. It’s not just for the purpose of just looking at their bodies.

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