Meet the Filmmakers of "500 Days of Summer" @ Apple Store Soho

As my wanderings continued (I skipped using the subway and just walked for the rest of the day- had to work off that burger!), I swung over to the Apple Store in Soho (which is only a couple blocks down Prince St from the NYFA campus I attended) with no particular goals in mind beyond enjoying the atmosphere of a major Apple Store.

Turns out they had a small "Meet the Filmmaker" event going on within 20 minutes of my arival there, this one with the writers and director of the film "500 Days of Summer", which hits theaters this weekend.

Rom-Coms aren't usually my thing, but the few TV spots and talk show clips I had seen had nabbed some of my interest- and it's Sundance awards at least indicated it wasn't going to be your typical Rom-Com formula. And Zooey Deschanel is hard to resist in any role. So I decided to stick around and check it out.

All three guys were pretty funny (though I was suprised at how young the writers seemingly were) and were pretty forward about wanting to avoid the worn-down formula of Rom-Coms (a genre the writers apparently do like) as well as unrealistic set pieces ("Nobody gets bitten by a dolphin in our movie.").

The subsequent Q&A included some interesting tidbits, including how the color scheme of the film was designed to highlight Zooey's presence in her scenes.

They showed a couple clips from the movie, including what looks to be a clever sequence using side-by-side split screen showing the same party, contrasting what the (apparently at-times-unreliable) narrator's expectations were with the reality of the situation.

It looks like this one will be worth checking out- amusingly enough, they pointed out that while testing the movie, men liked the movie more than women but, due to the genre, were also the least likely to recommend it.

Apple should have a video podcast of the event available shortly. You can search for Meet the Filmmaker on the iTunes Store and subscribe to it there.