\n<\/p>\n
This worried Duchovny, who is 63. The characters in \u201cWhat Happens Later\u201d bring the weight and disappointments of midlife. \u201cThey can\u2019t go through those younger rom-com moves \u2014 they can\u2019t appear stupid or stunted,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd yet they can\u2019t also be jaded or boring. It was really that dance of, how do we make it legitimate for adults?\u201d<\/p>\n
Even then, he wondered if there was an appetite to see mature people grasping at connection. \u201cThere\u2019s something in us that gets angry when we see people who are old hoping, you know?\u201d he said, adding, \u201cThat\u2019s the resistance that we push against in the movie. But lo and behold, we have \u2018The Golden Bachelor\u2019<\/a> now to show us the way.\u201d<\/p>\n Ryan wrote the movie following her long on-off relationship with the rocker John Mellencamp; she ended their engagement in 2019. Did that have anything to do with her interest in lovers who haunt each other for years? Not specifically, she said. <\/strong>\u201cBut in the idea of, some people go round and round\u201d and never get it right. \u201cAnd maybe they don\u2019t need to.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo be my age and to be looking back on things \u2014 so many of these stories are about looking forward into a happily ever after,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd there\u2019s just totally different questions up for grabs here.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not, of course, lost on her that rom-coms are what sold us on happily ever after (\u201ca crazy idea\u201d) in the first place. And that having the former poster girl for the genre puncture it with regrets or sadness is, to paraphrase her expletive, a mind-twister. \u201cIn my way, I feel like it\u2019s a badass little movie,\u201d she said with pride.<\/p>\n She cursed more than I\u2019d expected and leaned into unorthodox pleasures. Learning that I had never been to the area, she pointed me to a Vedanta temple<\/a> with a curving ocean view, designed, she noted, by one of the first prominent female architects<\/a> in California. \u201cIt\u2019s so surprising,\u201d she said, and insisted on giving me the address, up near the mountains. \u201cNo matter what, you\u2019ve got to go over the hill, because it\u2019s sunny.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n