At The
Movies

Its a long way from Kansas
for actor Paul Rudd, co-starring in
"The Object of My Affection."

SERENA DONADONI
Special to The Jewish News

T

he Object of My Affection
(Rated R), opening today, is
a thorny love story imbued
with compassion, a comedy
set in a liberal melting pot that finds
humor without throwing poisonous
barbs.
Nina Borowski (Jennifer Aniston)
acquires a new roommate, George
Hanson (Paul Rudd), who has just
been unceremoniously dismissed by
his longtime boyfriend. What was
supposed to be a temporary situation
grows into an intense friendship, one
that unnerves Nina's boyfriend, Vince
(John Pankow).
Things become even more compli-
cated when Nina becomes pregnant
and decides to raise her child not with
Vince, the father, but with her gay
roommate George, with whom she has
fallen in love.
"This is a film about a chain of
unrequited love," said director
Nicholas Hytner in Los Angeles,
"about falling in love with the wrong
person, about the difference between
sexual desire and romantic obsession,
about how necessary or not sexual pas-
sion is as a basis for a long and stable
relationship."
"I think they hoped they could
make up their own rules and just be
there and love one another," Jennifer
Aniston said of Nina and George,
"but you can't help but want to go
that one step further."
The Object of My Affection has an
impressive list of well-known names •
attached to it, including Nicholas
Hytner, the British stage director of

Serena Donadoni is a Detroit-based

freelance writer.

Miss Saigon and the recent revival of
Carousel who moved into films with
The Madness of King George and The
Crucible.
Playwright Wendy Wasserstein,
who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning
The Heidi Chronicles and The Sisters
Rosensweig among others, adapted
Stephen McCauley's novel as her first
screenplay, a project she has worked
on intermittently for the last decade.
The cast includes not just "Friends"
star Jennifer Aniston but other sitcom
and stage regulars: John Pankow, Tim
Daly, Alan Alda and Nigel
Hawthorne. The biggest question
mark is the actor playing George; his
biography in the press notes is half the
length of his co-stars'.
"Ooo, that means I'm mysterious,"
said Paul Rudd with a laugh when he's
told of the disparity.
The 29-year-old actor was born in
New York but grew up in Kansas City.
He attended the University of Kansas,
then the American Academy of Dra-
matic Arts. Although most of his work
has been onstage, Paul Rudd isn't a
complete stranger to film: He played
Alicia Silverstone's stepbrother in
Clueless, the jilted Paris in William
Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, and
recently appeared in Tile Locusts.
"The challenges in playing this
character [George Hanson] were just
acting challenges," explained Rudd,
"not having to do with a character's ,
sexual identity but just creating a real
human being who's going to respond
honestly and realistically to situations.
It was never a challenge not to play
into gay stereotypes.
"I was doing a play," he continued,
and one of the guys who was working
-at the theater had been in this situa-
tion: A gay man had been asked to be
the father of a child of his best friend.

George (Paul Rudd) is the object of Nina's (Jennifer Aniston) affection in "The
Object of My Affection."