Hilltop Views Entertainment co-editors, Holly Aker and Caroline Wallace, participated in a round-table phone interview with “Dear John” stars, Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried. Read what they have to say about young love, the filming process and kissing in the rain.

 

Reporter:  I know this movie is about young love; how do you think this movie relates to college students? I know there’s a growing popularity of couples getting married earlier. Do you think this will identify with people?Channing Tatum: I mean, I hope so. I really, I think that this is about that first you love had. I hope people think of their first loves. It’s really important once you find someone you care about to really take care of them and hold onto them as much and as hard as you possibly can. I think in a society today with over 50 percent divorce rate, it’s rare to find love and to make it work.Amanda Seyfried: Yeah, especially right now. College-aged kids are finding each other, and it’s that whole challenge of realizing if this is the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. In our story, they met that young, and it happens, and it’s realistic. That love can thrive if you let it.Reporter: Now obviously this is a love story, and obviously the chemistry is going to be phenomenal between you two to make viewers believe that you two are in love. How was your chemistry on the set? Did you guys get along? Did you have any problems? AS: The only problems were behind our back, making sure that none of us were coming around to cause trouble.CT: I like to play some pranks off set. I think it was a real miracle that we actually got anything done. We directed a lot at the director, and he loves to just play around. I really don’t know how we got anything done because he’s crazy, and if you let us we’ll just play all day.Reporter:  What kind of actual jokes did you play?CT: None, probably, that I can say on the air. They were harmless; they were nothing too bad, but I don’t think I can say very many of them on the air.AS: Yeah, he would get in trouble.CT: Yeah, I’d get in trouble.Reporter:  You guys are both playing pretty important roles that you’re representative of what many couples are going through with the war in Iraq. How do you feel about playing these roles and did these roles have an impact on you?CT: It for sure had an impact on me. This is my third soldier role now, and “G.I Joe” was more like “Star Wars” and “X-Men.” It really wasn’t a representation of a real soldier, but “Stop-Loss” was. I’ve gotten to know a lot of soldiers, and some of them are my best friends now. It’s in no way, shape or form in my head that what I do makes me understand a soldier because I, me or anybody else that is not in the armed forces, will ever know what it’s like to be a soldier. AS:  Now, I really appreciate the sacrifices they’re making, and also leaving their loved-ones as well. That’s a whole other story. Not only are you risking your life, but you’re risking what you have here in the states.CT: Talking to those soldiers, it was one of the things they said. The patience and the knowing that you’re going to go back, and you’re surrounded by danger but you try not to think about that. You just keep thinking, “I get to go back in two months, three months, four months, or however long it is. Getting anything in the mail makes your day. I can’t imagine being away from the person I love for that long. Two weeks is ridiculously long and painful. I am seriously awed by people who do it, especially yourself. I love what soldiers do. I obviously didn’t go into the military, so I don’t think I could do it.Reporter: Have you ever received a Dear John letter of any sort or a love letter in general?AS: A love letter not a Dear John. I got a love letter, and it’s something I keep through the years. It was the most romantic thing anyone’s done for me. It’s from an old boyfriend, and I still read it and I feel like a princess when I read it, because someone went through all the effort to write it. CT: I think I’ve gotten love letters and stuff, but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a Dear John letter. I’ve been broken up with after I got off the bus stop at school. A girl stuck her head out the window and broke up with me [laughs]. I never got a letter though.Reporter: Amanda, did that type of love letter inspire you in the film to feel that sort of passion for a person today?AS: Yeah, I’ve had such good experiences in my life with my partners that I can remember to each and every one. I can remember back to the times when I really felt loved and reflect onto the film. It’s pretty amazing. Everything’s inspired me and influenced me in my life. I’ve just been really lucky.CT: Guys listen. If you haven’t written a love letter in a long time, you don’t have to sit and mail it, you don’t have to do anything, just write her something. You’ll be amazed at the reaction.Reporter: In the real world, do you feel that this type of romance and this type of love can really work out—the way the film has portrayed it—especially over a long period of time?AS: It’s hard to connect. When you have that much time away from somebody it’s hard to stay connected in each other’s lives, so that’s the one thing you’re really fighting. If you lose that battle, I still think if it’s meant to be it’s going to happen, it’s going to come back to you. I definitely think there’s that one person in the world for everybody.CT: I think that you can make whatever work that you really, really want. I think that it’s painful, and it’s funny, with the person not being there, the things that it does to you. You start fighting over stupid things. That’s not what it’s about, all of a sudden you’re having an argument about nothing, and it’s really just that you miss the person so much. I absolutely think these relationships can work. You just got to really want it. You can’t just give up on them.Reporter:  Richard Genkins, who’s a very talented actor, is in the film. What in particular did each of you learn from him? CT: He’s such a giving actor; I think that’s one of the things I learned about him. He takes it so serious. He came in and wrote some of his scenes just off the character that was in the book. He knew his character was in love with coins and he came in with so much character study and really took the character to the next level. I do a scene with him in the hospital, and I think I owe that entire scene to him because it’s a very emotional scene, and I haven’t really had a lot of experience with those in my career, and he was so there for me. I don’t know how to explain that one. If you haven’t’ acted, it’s a little bit hard to explain. You’re just kind of there sometimes, and you don’t know what you’re doing, and then you look across from you and you have someone that’s completely there for you. It’s such a confidence builder. You really feel like someone cares, and they make it real for you, and it’s just a real conversation. Not to mention he’s an Academy award-winning actor.AS:  Yeah, it’s funny. If you get lost, but you’re working with somebody like that, he means a lot. He knew a lot about coins, and he’s really funny too. I would forget sometimes that I was in a scene and he was explaining coins. I was really listening, and he was really telling me. He’s just as real as it gets. He’s pretty cool. It does blow my mind working with people like that. Reporter: Channing you mentioned that you read the book, I’m curious just to see how you guys felt about the ending, and if you think audiences will feel fulfilled at the end of the film?CT: I’m very, very satisfied with the end of the film. We talked about it a lot, and it’s just really real I think. It’s a little different than a lot of his books. I think it has a little more life to it, and it’s very relevant right now. It’s about what’s happening right now, like the 9/11 of it all. I don’t want to give away too much of the movie, but I think it should make them think about the people that are in their lives and are they really telling them enough that they love them. I think we’ve done the end of the movie in a way that it doesn’t change the book, and it gives it a little more hope than the book might have.Reporter: My question, one for Channing: Have you ever kissed someone outside while it’s raining in real life?CT: Well I’m from Florida, and it rains pretty much all the time, so yes I did, for sure. Every day after school from 2:30, 3 ‘o’clock it’s raining, so absolutely. Reporter: : Do you have a thing for chick flicks?CT: For chick flicks? Man, that’s a good question. I saw this movie with my mom and sister when I was really young. I don’t know if it’s so much a chick flick, but it was the first one that popped into my head: “Fried Green Tomatoes.” Stacy: Amanda, Can you talk about your first teenage relationship?AS: Yeah, it was with a boy who I was obsessed with because I thought he was a cross between Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Timberlake in my eyes when I was 14. He was a senior, and I was a freshman, and he wanted to date me. He was a friend of my sister. He had some weird specification that he thought I had and my friends didn’t. We dated, and I totally couldn’t deal with the fact that he liked me so much, so I dumped him. It was very strange. We’d go to movies, and we’d hang out, but I didn’t feel like I deserved to be the loved the way he loved me. It was just a teenage insecurity, and I lost a good one. He’s a great guy still, and I thought he was so sweet.Reporter:  How did you both prepare for these roles? Did you talk to anyone with a significant other in the army?CT: Did I speak to anyone specifically in the army? Reporter: Like someone who’s actually going through this.CT: Yeah, the Special Forces guys that were in my unit all had relationships, and a couple of them were married even, and they have to go through it every time they get deployed, or even when they’re at home, they have responsibilities. It’s a different life being a soldier’s wife or girlfriend, and you have to endure a lot. I know that I shouldn’t say that I understand it totally because I don’t know if I could do that. I could go maybe, at max, three weeks away from my loved one, and I admire them. Still to this day, when I talk to them and they say they have to go away for six months, seven months, eight months, and they don’t know sometimes where they are and they can’t say where they are or how far they are away from home. It absolutely blows my mind.Reporter: How about you Amanda? Did you talk to a wife or girl?AS:  We were just at Fort Bragg, and there were about 100 families there, wives that were telling me how their husband or fiancé has been deployed, and it’s tough. I really can’t say, “Oh, I understand,” because I’m not that brave to go without that connection for that long, but they trust that these are the people that they’re meant to be with, so they’ll do anything. They’ll wait forever for somebody. I think that’s so beautiful and brave, and I respect them so much.Reporter:  Let’s say you two were both the directors. Would you keep the ending the same or change it to make it happier?AS: I’d make it happier.CT: We discussed a lot about the end of the movie and how to do it. The book is a little sad at the end, but they leave it kind of open-ended in a way, and we just took it a little step farther and added a little more hope at the end. I think if I was the director, that’s probably exactly what I would’ve done. You don’t know what’s going to happen 20 years down the road. We changed it a little bit. We didn’t change the book; we added another page. Reporter: Obviously you’ve had a lot of diverse roles in your career, but I want to know what kind of goals do you set when you’re choosing a new project to work on?AS: It’s always got to be something different than the last.CT: You try every time that you read a script to push yourself, and you want to stretch and do something different. It’s kind of hard because as soon as you do a movie, as soon as I did a dance movie, every single dance movie on the planet gets set to you. And you’re like, “Gosh, I can’t do dance movies for the rest of my career.” Or if you do an action movie, anything that says, “And he jumps,” or “he punches,” or “he kicks,” that immediately comes your way. It’s a little disappointing because you want to be able to try different things, and I’ve been really blessed in my career to have that opportunity.Reporter:  Do you guys feel like there’s one specific, ideal role you’d like to play?CT: I kind of want to play a villain. I haven’t played a villain yet, and I kind of want to go down that dark road and see what happens.Reporter:  A lot of  movies nowadays are written by the same guy who wrote “Dear John,” like “The Notebook” and all that. Do you think it’s over saturating the market at all? Or are the movies different enough that they’ll still be accepted?AS: Ours is at least different enough.CT: I think ours is definitely different, and I don’t know if it’s oversaturated at all because when “The Notebook” came out people were running to see that movie because I think there’s a real lack of movies like that. AS: There’s an inspiration in that that you don’t get in most movies. I know “Avatar” is a huge blockbuster, and everyone wants to see it, and everybody’s inspired by that, but that is unique. And I know obviously it’s in theaters today, but that is a really unique film, and it brings so much inspiration, and I think this is the type of movie that normally does and isn’t out enough. Reporter: Channing, any word on maybe a “G.I. Joe” sequel or anything?CT: Yes, they picked new writers, so the writers are starting to write. I’ve heard and I’m hoping they’re scheduling it for 2011, gosh it’s so weird to say 2011, and it’s the writers of “Zombieland,” so we got some good writers this time. Last time they wrote the script under a lot of pressure because it was the writer strike and the actor strike was coming up, and it was really rough, and I hope we can take our time a little bit and get it right.Reporter: Obviously, “The Notebook” had a really big fan following. I was just wondering if either of you talked to Rachel McAdams or Ryan Gosling about the kinds of fans you’ll probably be encountering after doing a Nicholas Sparks film?CT: No. I wish I had. I love Ryan as an actor, but I’ve never met him. I don’t get out much.Reporter: Were both of you on board with the script as soon as you read it or did it take some convincing?CT: I was actually on the movie before it had a script, so I read the book, and I knew exactly what happens. I saw “The Notebook.” My wife looked up at me, literally just balling her eyes, and made me promise we’re both going to die together at the exact same time. So, I knew what that did, as a movie, to women, and I’m not going to say I wasn’t emotionally moved either because it just is a great film. So, I read the book, and it did, like I said, seem to have a little more grit to it than some of his other novels that have been turned into movies. So, I was really interested, and then I met with the producer then we started meeting with writers. It’s a very rare thing in Hollywood, for an actor especially, to be on the full creative side from the beginning, and we got to read and meet all these different writers and their pitches for it. You get to do that, and then you pick one, and then you get to go through all the different drafts. You hope to get a great director, and we got Lasse Hallström. So, I’ve been on it for a long time, right around four years. Reporter:  So, you pursued it, and what about you Amanda?AS: I had to audition a couple of times, but it was pretty clear to me what I wanted to do. It was an opportunity to play a romantic lead, and I basically knew almost all of Lasse’s work. The story was real. It was a little bit different; it was darker, and I liked the character a lot. It was just really well written.Reporter: Amanda, congrats on the Golden Globe nomination for that television drama, “Big Love.” AS: Thanks. Reporter:  Are you not doing that anymore?AS: Yeah, I worked on it for six years, and I really wanted to move back to New York.Reporter: OK, what’s the plan now then? AS:  We only shot about five months, I was only working once or twice a week, so just the plan is to keep working on films for a while. Reporter: OK, so, there’s nothing with television? It’s just going to be strictly film?AS: Yeah, I think so. I’m definitely planning on going back next year, just not in every episode. It’s less of a commitment. Reporter: A lot of the book and movie have significant precedence: a love story unfurling against the backdrop of a war. What makes “Dear John” stand out against the genre of romantic war drama?CT: I hope that people don’t think it’s about war. I really don’t want people thinking they’re going to go in and have another depressing war movie on their hands. We didn’t want to see John with a weapon on all the time and swogging through really dangerous places. Yes, that is what happens in the book and in the movie, but we really just wanted it to be about two kids falling in love.AS:  That’s the characters; it’s them and how the dealt with the fact that they were in love and they couldn’t control their environment at all.CT: I think you could have taken John out of the military and made him anything else, and as long as that distance and time were between them, and then things come down the road that they don’t expect. I just really don’t want people thinking this is a war drama. This is a love story between two kids in love for the very first time, and it’s that first love that you can’t get right. It’s so hard to get that right, and they’re just trying to learn, trying to figure out life.