The Tom Hanks vehicle (he starred, directed and co-wrote the film) “Larry Crowne” won’t scoot into theatres until July 1st, but we’re already rolling out a peek of our coverage, as we recently had the opportunity to sit in on a press conference with the film’s other writer, Nia Vardalos. Perhaps best known for her critically-acclaimed debut “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” – which her ‘Crowne’ cohort, Hanks, produced – Vardalos weighed in on the value of a hard day’s work, what she has coming up, as well as keeping ‘Crowne’ uplifting in a time when the story has become all too relevant.
“I think Tom and Barack Obama have caused this economic crisis so that the film would be successful,” Vardalos jokes. But the film didn’t start out as a reaction to the recession, it was simply an idea that Hanks brought to her about starting over. “It was Tom’s idea, he came to me I think it was in 2005 or 2006. [While she was at Playtone with “My Life in Ruins”] Tom said ‘I have an idea for a movie, do you want to write it?’ So we sat down in his office and he laid out the entire idea—it was very clear in his head—of what would happen if a man at 50 years old lost his job through no fault of his own because of downsizing and had to reinvent himself,” she explained “He wanted to keep it as a very quiet story, a very streamlined idea, because I think Tom’s approach is very much… he is the everyman.”
Vardalos also drew from her own working-class background while writing, “I had a job at 16 and although I didn’t like that, I’m very, very grateful for that now because it taught me to be self-supporting and not dependent.” The experience also gave her a sense of humility that came in handy when working as a struggling actress, willing to take a job as perfunctory as selling T-shirts in The Second City Chicago lobby (where she was a performer) to make extra income. “And that I think is what Larry Crowne is going through,” she explained. “Larry will do anything to make a living and that is indicative I think globally and much more so in this country. People are just trying to get by.”
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