Every good party starts with an expert host. This weekend, audiences will receive Olivia Wilde’s couples drama The Invite. The film revived January’s sleepy Sundance thanks to a mesmerizing four-hander with co-stars Penelope Cruz, Ed Norton and Seth Rogen.
The film, with its themes of marital distress and unfulfilled fantasies (including sexual ones), struck a chord with Park City critics and audiences. It also sparked a tense bidding war before A24 prevailed, winning domestic distribution rights for more than $12 million, Variety reported at the time.
Screenwriters Rashida Jones and Will McCormack are certain to be included on the hosting committee for “The Invite.” Longtime friends and partners, they adapted Cesc Gay’s 2020 Spanish-language film The People Upstairs, unleashing director and star Wilde and her ensemble on a concept that made Jones and McCormack’s screenplay special: storytelling deeply rooted in their own experiences, delivered in a brutally honest and never-cheesy style.
The film tackles fertility, perimenopause, toxic masculinity, financial strain, and women’s joys and disappointments, as many marriages eventually do. There are no parlor games or rage-baiting that is typical of this genre.
“We both have cheese meters in-house and we’re constantly checking them,” Jones told Variety. “Conversation has to feel like real people feel. Poetry has to come from truth.”
This isn’t new territory for the pair, who wrote their first screenplay sitting side by side on the same laptop. In 2012’s “Celeste and Jesse Forever,” Jones co-starred with Andy Samberg as college sweethearts who can’t stay married but don’t want to give up on their friendship.
“The most heartbreaking moments of our lives were also some of the funniest,” McCormack said. “While ‘Celeste and Jesse’ was about the heartbreak of love, ‘The Invite’ is really about the heartbreak of life: losing your parents, being in a long-term relationship, having kids or not. It’s dealing with the heartache of midlife, and this movie met us just when we were ready for it.”
The writers consulted relationship guru Esther Perel for the script for “Invite,” which McCormack called beneficial to both his life and work. Jones said she and her writing partner have a new appreciation for marriage and think the film supports that.
“We want people to evolve, and we want to forgive them. We can do that with our children and our friends. But when our partner, us, can’t show acceptance, those relationships start to cause problems. Even if we’re at a different pace, once we can do that, it becomes an argument to get married,” says Jones.
Regarding the couple’s creative marriage, Variety asked them what would stand in the way of their agreement if they married in different lives.
“Will and I had the biggest fight of our lives when we were both working at Pixar,” Jones said, recalling the time he and McCormack were in the Toy Story 4 writers’ room. “He said I was biting the spoon too much when I ate. He said I was mouth breathing too much. We were spending a lot of time together.”
While “The Invite” is poised to be released in limited release ahead of a full release on Friday, Jones and McCormack have several other projects in the works, including writing a feature-length “Tom & Jerry” adventure at Warner Bros. Animation. Naturally, they see the cat-and-mouse battle as a relationship comedy.
Their Tom and Jerry are each rescued by good people and eventually fall in love. The cat and mouse then begin a campaign to destroy each other and the bond between their owners.
“Tom and Jerry will do anything they can to either kill the other person or break up with[their owner],” McCormack said. “This is a La La Land-style romantic comedy. Why do these characters fight so much? It’s because they want attention and they want to be loved. The logline of our film is literally ‘Love is worth fighting for.'”
