MOTHER NATURE: “You can jog and peel and nip and tuck, but your insides are still rotting away…” |  One of I Could Never Be Your Woman’s key themes is the fear of growing old that pervades Western society, and particularly Hollywood. Heckerling has first-hand experience of a culture where it’s considered bizarre if men and women of the same age have sex. Heaven forbid that an older woman date a younger man…
“I was trying to deal with the fact that a 70-year-old guy can be in a relationship with a 40-year-old woman and want a pat on the back for not going too young!” Heckerling laughs. “There are factors in sexual relationships that we don’t understand. You go to a nightclub and see young beautiful girls attracted to rich sleazy older men and nothing like that going the other way. Why? Because this is the animal kingdom. Power translates to money and fruitfulness to big fake breasts. The females that look like they are ready to give birth mate with the males that look like they are capable of killing the other males. That’s how things go and you can’t get mad about it.” This conflict is personified in the film in the character of Mother Nature. “You want things to go one way but you know that the natural order of things is another. And you just keep fighting with yourself,” explains Heckerling. “I guess I did a similar thing in Look Who’s Talking because I had a baby who represented the non-neurotic precivilised version of the mother’s thoughts.” IZZIE: Hey Ma, How do you know when it’s true love?
ROSIE: Usually you make the music louder and… sometimes they look up in slow motion.
IZZIE: No, not on TV. In real life. |  While Rosie’s love affair with Adam provides I Could Never Be Your Woman with romance, in many ways the heart of the story is the relationship between Rosie and Izzie, her daughter. There is nothing sentimental, nothing mawkish about this hugely funny double-act. And that is in large part because Izzie is based on Molly, Heckerling’s
own daughter, now a grown-up studying film in New York City.
ROSIE: Iz, why is there a Ken doll in the heat vent?
IZZIE: Remember when he had Alzheimer’s and he wandered off?
Ma, I’m starting to not care so much about Barbies.
ROSIE: But she’s finally getting her life together. She’s got a jeep, a
horse and a schoolroom.
IZZIE: Yeah but it’s make-believe. It’s not satisfying.
ROSIE: Who are you? | “I would love to say, ‘Oh ain’t I smart to write this stuff?’” confesses Heckerling, “but I was blessed with this kid that was so funny. Over the years I just wrote down things she said. It sounds crazy, but it was so much more fun to play Barbies with her than anything else in the world.” Obviously Heckerling’s experiences as a mother inform both the Rosie and Izzie characters, and the situations they encounter. Heckerling elaborates: “One of the difficult things about having a kid is you see them go through these heartbreaking things – if they like a boy who doesn’t know they exist, or if other girls are mean to them at school – and there’s nothing you can do about it.”  Heckerling has also borrowed from her own life for the story between Adam and Rosie, although in this case, a little more imagination was required! Their love story is a romantic-comedyidentikit version of various Heckerling run-ins with the opposite sex. She continues: “Romantic comedy is obviously about people finding love, because then you get your vicarious thrills. I’ve had various and sundry boyfriends: some idiots and some that were funny. If you’re in the business of making romantic comedies you pull different ideas out of situations that may have been pretty crummy in reality. It’s a lot of fun to turn that into a positive!”
ROSIE: Remember when we had that talk about you being 29?
I keep thinking about how young that is.
ADAM: I’m planning on getting older. | Heckerling has not restricted her wicked wit to the vagaries of older woman-younger man relationships. She also lifts the lid on the fascinating world in which the love affair between Rosie and Adam unfolds, namely the T.V. industry in Los Angeles. The satirical treatment of behind-camera machinations on a failing show are not so very far from the truth of what happens.  Paul Rudd agrees: “L.A. has a weird set of standards - age being one of them. I know that execs are always looking for younger writers because they think they are more in tune with what’s hip and what’s going on. For women it’s even harder. It’s pretty sad and short-sighted: there’s such a double standard because if you look at most movies, the age difference between Michelle Pfeiffer and I is smaller. It’s just that men are the older ones.”
British actress Sarah Alexander, who plays Rosie’s assistant Jeannie, elaborates: “It is fantastically cut-throat over there. They invest a lot more money in television shows than we do in Britain. So there’s more at stake and there’s a lot more pressure. The way the show is axed just wouldn’t happen like that at the BBC, it would be a cup of tea, a biscuit and ‘I’m terribly sorry…’” The end result is a witty, heartfelt movie defined at every moment by Heckerling’s distinct brand of healthy cynicism. Themes that in less clever hands could be schmaltzy or embittered are sewn together here in an edgy, honest and lovable film. No less than you would expect from the writer-director of Clueless, Look Who’s Talking and Fast Times At Ridgemont High… | 
The Story
