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" I was planning to talk to screenwriter/director Roger Kumble about the Ryan Phillippe/Reese Witherspoon sex scene in Cruel Intentions, specifically about his spectacular use of &amp;quot;Colorblind&amp;quot; for the scene. But a brief interview about slow-jam sex soundtracking turned into a lengthier conversation about the 1999 movie. Here are 12 interesting facts I learned, including some exciting news: He&amp;#039;s working on a Cruel Intentions play. 1. Welcome to the Dollhouse sparked the idea for the screenplay.  &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d just seen Todd Solondz&amp;#039;s Welcome to the Dollhouse, and I was like, Wow \u2026 fucked up high school. Never seen this. It was so dark. And it was one of those moments when you&amp;#039;re just walking across the street, and the idea popped into my head to do Dangerous Liaisons set in high school. And I mulled it over for a year. &amp;quot;Then I put a play up in 1997 called d girl and I got David Schwimmer to be in it, at the height of Friends. And that was a game-changer for me. It was a pretty dark play. It was about a screenwriter who&amp;#039;s just looking to seduce this innocent d-girl [short for development girl, a person in film production who scouts potential movie ideas]. I put that up and it was a hit out in LA. So I had some heat, and I didn&amp;#039;t want to lose it. Literally, the day the play went down I went to Mexico and I wrote Cruel Intentions in 12 days.&amp;quot; 2. I Know What You Did Last Summer helped the movie get made. &amp;quot;I met Neal Moritz who&amp;#039;s now like, Neal Moritz [producer of Fast &amp;amp;amp; Furious, 21 Jump Street, I Am Legend, and more] through this person who was working for him at the time. She brought him the script and he was like, &amp;#039;I just made this movie, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and there are these two actors in it; you really should meet them.&amp;#039; And it was Ryan Phillippe and Sarah Michelle Gellar. And they were great. And I was just excited to get my movie made, so I was like, &amp;#039;Great!&amp;#039; Once we cast Sarah and Ryan, then it got heat; we had two hot actors. Columbia picked it up as a negative pickup [meaning the studio would finance it but Moritz would own the movie].&amp;quot; 3. Katie Holmes was up for Reese Witherspoon&amp;#039;s part as Annette; Reese wound up getting the part after Ryan and Roger took her out and begged her.  &amp;quot;We got into disagreements over who was going to play Annette. The studio wanted Katie Holmes, who was just starting to do Dawson&amp;#039;s Creek. And I liked this actor Vinessa Shaw. And they were both great. But this was early Katie, and I thought we needed someone with a little more strength of character. And we just couldn&amp;#039;t agree. And then, literally, I was hanging out with Ryan one night and I was like, &amp;#039;What about your girlfriend?&amp;#039; &amp;quot;So, basically, we took Reese out to dinner to get her drunk, and we ended up getting drunk. And I literally got down on my knees and begged her: &amp;#039;Please, it&amp;#039;ll be 15 days, you&amp;#039;ll be great.&amp;#039; And Reese was like, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;ll do it. But we need to work on the character.&amp;#039; I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;#039;Anything, anything, anything.&amp;#039; She wanted to strengthen the character, and she was right. And she and I got together, and we gave Annette more bite so she wasn&amp;#039;t a doormat. And I&amp;#039;m very grateful to her for that.&amp;quot; 4. Selma Blair went Method for her audition.  &amp;quot;It was the smartest audition I&amp;#039;ve ever seen in my career. I remember having to ask all the actors coming in how old they were because that scene [when Ryan&amp;#039;s character, Sebastian, gets Selma&amp;#039;s character, Cecile, drunk, and then goes down on her] is, for lack of a better word, rape. So we were like, &amp;#039;All right, we&amp;#039;re gonna shoot this. It&amp;#039;s going to be dicey if we get away with it. But we can&amp;#039;t have an underage girl.&amp;#039; So we were bringing in all these people and they were all good, but I remember Selma came in and I said, &amp;#039;How old are you?&amp;#039; And she goes [in Cecile&amp;#039;s bratty voice] &amp;#039;How old are you?&amp;#039; And she was so obnoxious and I couldn&amp;#039;t get it out of my head. She came into the audition as the character and didn&amp;#039;t show me that there was Selma; I said, &amp;#039;This is the person.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; 5. Ryan wasn&amp;#039;t particularly worried about shooting such dark material. &amp;quot;We were all young and didn&amp;#039;t know. I remember Ryan coming up to me when we were shooting, and he goes, &amp;#039;When you break down this movie, it&amp;#039;s really about me wanting to have anal sex with my sister.&amp;#039; [When Sebastian and Sarah Michelle&amp;#039;s character, Kathryn, make their bet, she says, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;ll let you put it anywhere.&amp;#039;] I said, &amp;#039;Well, that&amp;#039;s an interesting way of looking at it. I never thought of that.&amp;#039; He&amp;#039;s like, &amp;#039;The whole plot turns on that.&amp;#039; And I go, &amp;#039;Yeah, it does.&amp;#039; I didn&amp;#039;t realize it at the time.      &amp;quot;I think probably because my background was more in comedy, I was able to button the [darker] scenes with a bit of a joke and make them more palatable. In [the rape scene] I have him go out of frame and then Selma makes some silly kind of interjection and then falls out of frame. I kind of was excused. &amp;quot;But I remember going to the theaters at the time it came out, and it was an R-rated movie and they were cracking down hard on kids getting into R-rated movies. And there were signs in the theaters saying, &amp;#039;No one under 17, especially for Cruel Intentions.&amp;#039; I should have taken a photo of it. All the sex that went on in that movie \u2014 they did not want the kids to see it.&amp;quot; 6. Speaking of sex scenes: Yes, shooting the Ryan/Reese sex scene was awkward. Of course it was. &amp;quot;There were two scenes where I kind of gave them their space and made the set as comfortable as possible: The lovemaking scene \u2014 in any situation like that, you shut the set down \u2014 and the breakup scene. For the lovemaking scene, there were a couple of movies I referenced ... Theo van de Sande, who shot Cruel Intentions, who was really my film teacher because I had only directed theater, we watched a lot of film together \u2026 So I go, &amp;#039;This is what I&amp;#039;m going for. I don&amp;#039;t want it to be exploitative, I want it to be beautiful.&amp;#039; There was a lovemaking scene in The Player, with Tim Robbins and Greta Scacchi, for example. So once Ryan and Reese were comfortable and Theo and I were comfortable and they saw what I was trying to do, there was that scene. &amp;quot;What I do in situations like that in anything I&amp;#039;m working on is I just drop the pretentions of the job and go, &amp;#039;OK, let&amp;#039;s deal with the elephant in the room. I&amp;#039;m about to film a sex scene with you and I feel weird.&amp;#039; And then usually they&amp;#039;re like, &amp;#039;No, no, no, we get it \u2014 it&amp;#039;s weird.&amp;#039; And then I go, &amp;#039;How do I make it less weird; let&amp;#039;s all be on the same page.&amp;#039; &amp;quot;If you notice in the movie, there&amp;#039;s no nudity except Ryan. Because I don&amp;#039;t need to see Annette nude; I don&amp;#039;t need to see Kathryn nude. The words are speaking for it. So even though we kind of sweated them up in the sex scene, he&amp;#039;s on top. We didn&amp;#039;t have to go there.&amp;quot; 7. Ryan vomited while shooting the breakup scene.  &amp;quot;I think Ryan talks about it often \u2014 he threw up on set. And it was one of those things where I just let the cameras roll. &amp;#039;Let&amp;#039;s go back, do it again, let&amp;#039;s go back.&amp;#039; I want to be professional, but until I feel like we have it, you just have to go. As a director, you&amp;#039;re like, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m not going to be the most liked person today.&amp;#039; I don&amp;#039;t think we did too many takes. But, you know, you get what you need to get. You really want to see him ripping his heart out.&amp;quot; 8. Back to the sex scene: It was originally set to a Smashing Pumpkins song, but Billy Corgan refused to sell the rights to his music. The Counting Crows swooped in at the very last minute with &amp;quot;Colorblind.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;I wrote a lot of the movie to music. It&amp;#039;s like that first-time filmmaker thing: &amp;#039;This would be perfect for this.&amp;#039; For that scene, there was this Smashing Pumpkins song called &amp;#039;To Sheila,&amp;#039; which fit perfectly. If you turn off the Counting Crows and play the scene to &amp;#039;To Sheila,&amp;#039; it actually works quite nicely. And [it seemed like] we were getting the song, it was great; Billy Corgan was watching the movie. It was down to the wire, and then they give me the call: &amp;#039;Smashing Pumpkins said no.&amp;#039; And we were like, &amp;#039;Oh, fuck.&amp;#039; Because we were all in agreement then \u2014 the producers, the studio, and I: This is the right song. &amp;quot;Then everyone had their favorites and we couldn&amp;#039;t agree. So we were trying every song in that scene, which we all knew was pivotal. And I remember I was championing a Neil Finn song. But they weren&amp;#039;t as jazzed about it as I was and we were at a standstill. Then the music supervisor came in and said, &amp;#039;Adam Duritz saw the movie and loved it and he wrote this song and they&amp;#039;re recording it tonight or tomorrow night, but here&amp;#039;s a demo of it.&amp;#039; And we heard the opening, the piano, and we were like, &amp;#039;Oh my god, this is great. We love this.&amp;#039; And Neal and I, we went to Adam&amp;#039;s house, or the Crows&amp;#039; house they were renting at the time, that night or the next night, and watched them record &amp;#039;Colorblind.&amp;#039; We put it on the film and it was great.&amp;quot;      9. The movie almost got made without &amp;quot;Bittersweet Symphony&amp;quot; as well.  &amp;quot;That was another example of me writing a scene perfectly to music without getting the rights. That was a nightmare. It just fit amazingly [in the final scene] \u2014 the strings hitting as she&amp;#039;s breaking down on the podium and then you cut outside right when the song kind of kicks in and it just accomplished everything. So we&amp;#039;re like, &amp;#039;Oh, let&amp;#039;s get the rights from The Verve.&amp;#039; But then you find out The Verve doesn&amp;#039;t own the rights, The Rolling Stones own the rights [because it samples an orchestral version of the Rolling Stones song &amp;#039;The Last Time&amp;#039;]. So it was a headache. It was one of those things where the studio was like, &amp;#039;Try another song.&amp;#039; And we kept trying and trying and no one could agree. And the studio was like, &amp;#039;Let&amp;#039;s just pay for it.&amp;#039; We paid for everything, but we really paid for that one.&amp;quot;      10. There was a porn star on set; she flashed everyone.  &amp;quot;There was a scene where Ryan is on the phone with Annette. It&amp;#039;s on the DVD of the deleted scenes. Originally you kind of pan around him, and in the background are two naked cheerleaders, oiling themselves up. Just to show what a cad he was at that stage. And for that, I wanted to see some gratuitous nudity. But I didn&amp;#039;t want some girl crying in her trailer [about having to get naked]. My parents didn&amp;#039;t raise me that way. I didn&amp;#039;t want to force anybody. So I was like, &amp;quot;I know! I&amp;#039;ll hire an adult film star; they have no problem with that.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;So we found this girl, her name was Alisha Klass, and she was the biggest star in adult films in the late &amp;#039;90s, and she had the most innocent looking, cute face \u2014 all natural, the &amp;#039;90s. So we met her and I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;#039;Hey! We&amp;#039;ll give you a line, it&amp;#039;s more of a humorous scene.&amp;#039; And she was really sweet; she was great. And then two days later, I&amp;#039;m working in my office, working on rewrites, and my costume designer comes in, she goes, &amp;#039;We have a problem. The women on set have a problem.&amp;#039; I was like, &amp;#039;What?&amp;#039; She goes, &amp;#039;Your actor&amp;#039;s at catering and she&amp;#039;s wearing just a fishnet whatever, body skirt, and is basically flashing all of us.&amp;#039; So it was like a no-good-deed situation. Where I just didn&amp;#039;t want to force an actor to go topless in a scene and I got the one person with no inhibitions. And now I&amp;#039;m like the pig in front of all the women on the crew. &amp;quot;The scene got cut because during the testing process we&amp;#039;re like, &amp;#039;Eh, too much; not worth it.&amp;#039; I was just throwing in a joke. But she was very sweet. She brought some DVDs for some of the grips.&amp;quot; 11. The Sarah/Selma spit string was a happy accident. &amp;quot;I forget who, but someone said, &amp;#039;We need to go again, there&amp;#039;s saliva connecting them.&amp;#039; And Theo was like, &amp;#039;No, it&amp;#039;s beautiful.&amp;#039; And I was like, &amp;#039;No, it&amp;#039;s hot. I mean, we&amp;#039;ll go again, but I think it&amp;#039;s cool.&amp;#039; So it was a happy accident. And it&amp;#039;s kind of been remembered for that. They did win the MTV Award for best kiss.&amp;quot;      12. The movie might next become a play.  &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll tell you this: I&amp;#039;m adapting it for the stage. Not a musical. It&amp;#039;s a work in progress. Rather than reboot it or any of that, I was like, &amp;#039;This really could live on the stage.&amp;#039; If you look at the staging of Cruel Intentions, it&amp;#039;s like a play. It&amp;#039;s mostly two people in a scene, three people in the scene. I&amp;#039;ve been working on it for about a year now; we might try to workshop it. What&amp;#039;s going to happen, I have no idea.&amp;quot; P.S. Kumble also directed one of my favorite rom-coms, the underrated &amp;#039;Just Friends&amp;#039;, so we talked about that as well. Expect a Part Two this week. From the editors of  Related:  Emmy-Winning Casting Director Jen Euston Explains What Casting Actually Is  Related: 15 Reasons Why We Still Love &amp;#039;Cruel Intentions&amp;#039; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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