When Jennifer Lopez calls, you answer, which is how Dave Meyers ended up directing the singer’s ambitious new film This Is Me … Now: A Love Story. The $20 million self-funded project is heavily influenced by her bookend romance with Ben Affleck. Lopez was so sure of the movie, which infuses music from her new album, it was hard for Meyers not to get onboard.
“Jen’s the reason it happened. She wrote her own check. When people doubted her, when friends doubted her about what she was doing, when her personal people doubted her — ‘What the hell are you doing, Jen?’ — she was just like, I will die on my sword for what I believe in, and I believe in this,” Meyers tells Yahoo Entertainment.
The movie explores true love, self-love and failed romances, one of which depicts an abusive relationship as Lopez sings “Rebound,” a scene Meyers says was “tough” to film. Lopez told Yahoo that while certain themes in the movie are rooted in truth, it’s not entirely autobiographical and is more “meta.” But it was Lopez’s “unapologetic boldness to be vulnerable” that made Meyers want to make this movie — and he also had a vision for the film.
“She’s such a scrutinized celebrity, you know?” Meyers says. “What can I offer to the scrutiny of the public that would be unexpected and something that they might find interesting? What was really loud in my mind was this idea of her vulnerability and her being honest. Even me knowing her for all these years … this is a really interesting opportunity if she wants to open up about what she’s been through.”
Meyers talks to Yahoo Entertainment about what was the “hardest” part of filmmaking, Affleck’s creative influence and how they pulled off Tropic Thunder-inspired cameo.
How did you get involved with Jennifer’s passion project?
Jen recorded an album and was starting to think about how to present it to the world. I [went to her house], Jen sang the record to me and talked a bit in general about what she’d been through and rekindling with Ben. I hadn’t seen her in awhile so we just started talking. … I started asking questions about what happened the first time with Ben. I got to hear the music and this unguarded vulnerability.
The music is explosive. She’s a huge star. Her love life is a huge [topic] in the press. How do we make a spectacle that carries her truth and really also carries the weight of who she is as a star. It just seemed like this truth spectacle experience. Jen carries a unique ability to understand all of what we were doing. She’s both an artist, an actress, a choreographer, you know, in spirit. We were in Ben’s office at 11:00 p.m. writing the script with the writer. She was so involved in the most beautiful way and was so available despite her very busy schedule, it just kind of got going
How involved was Ben in the creative process? Did you get to hear his perspective of their love story, too?
Ben did not open up with me specifically, although he did open up as a filmmaker with us. We would be in the office working and he would walk in and give us some enthusiasm or give us a beautiful speech about filmmaking or vulnerability or storytelling. That sort of just continued all the way through. He was like a mentor. I’d like to say he was a mentor to me, but I’m sure he was mentoring Jen.
I think Ben’s influence on this was that he was helping guide the confidence that Jen needed to be involved in writing, producing and help her with some of the territory that was new for her. At the same time, Jen’s unapologetically confident when it comes to the spectacle of Jen.
Ben isn’t directly featured in the film. How intentional was that?
I [didn’t have] the conversation with Ben about excluding him, but it was a very strong feeling that I had and that Jen also had that this movie can’t be about him and it never was supposed to be. At the start [of the film] true love being ruined was a really great premise to be like: Why did true love not work? Was it true love? Let’s go through all these other guys and the experiences that she had and her ultimately getting rid of the guys and realizing she needed to be alone, and going on that solo journey and learning to be happy with herself. That was really the driving premise always from the beginning. We toyed with, does Ben show up at all at the end?
Well, he does show up in an unexpected way.
An early pitch that I had for the film was that Ben was ever present. So he was always in disguise, showing up. You know, there was an extended version of this film in the early days of us writing it. There was this idea that he was an ever-present source, almost like a meta thing of he’s always been there, but he’s not there. As it kind of went through the journey — we didn’t necessarily do multiple characters with Ben, but we had this one character. It was actually the first thing that we shot and so we had this great performance from Ben and we thought wouldn’t it be great to have him pop up throughout the film? We ebbed and flowed with that and I think it’s a really fun way to use Ben… We really went hard on the prosthetics. My inspiration for that was Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder.
The film really is quite the spectacle, to use your word, and a lot is packed into one hour. What was the toughest scene to film from your perspective?
There’s two scenes. The first day of the shoot was the glass house, which is tough subject matter [when she sings “Rebound.”] So here we have this very stressful film, and we’re very heavily on green screen, mainly to save money, and Jen believed in it, but didn’t really know what I was doing. So we were shooting a very difficult scene on day one, and it was just a hard way to start the film. Turned out to be great.
The actual hardest filmmaking, I suppose, was the Zodiac council [played by Jane Fonda, Post Malone, Keke Palmer, Sofia Vergara and others.] They were all shot separately over three months and we had to chase schedules … the creativity of it feeling like a fluid conversation was one of the hardest things to do.
You worked with Jennifer on multiple music videos more than 20 years ago, some of which were when she dated Ben for the first time. What’s stayed the same and what’s changed about her decades later?
The same is that she’s f***ing professional as hell. She’s the best to work with in that regard and her team is just dialed. In the world of music, that’s actually a really big statement. I’ve always appreciated that and it really allows me as a creative to plan that I can actually get what it is that I want to get.
As for where she is now: Mainly her unapologetic boldness to be vulnerable. The judgment that she’s already knowing is gonna happen is not something that, while it may keep her up some nights, it doesn’t stop her from expressing herself. Capturing Jen in this moment is just such a wonderful time for me to realign with her because I really like honesty. To have Jen, someone who’s kept a lot of her personal life private, being ready to talk about her pain and her journey in a vulnerable way was just a really — I don’t know that that’s what I noticed. Jen was very centered as the mogul that she is — very centered with Ben, very centered with life and with her family, and then very centered with the production.
This Is Me … Now: A Love Story is streaming on Prime Video.
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