Simon Baker in Sex and Death 101 Courtesy of Anchor Bay Entertainment

A lot of it has to do with the fact that I also grew up in South Bend, Indiana in the middle of the Midwest, and I loved movies. Like, I had a religious experience seeing Jaws, like everybody my age did. But then my [parents] divorced, and my father got a job at McGill University in Montréal, so I moved. I went there for college and it was definitely a different sensibility as far as films go. I ended up [thinking], "Oh, I'm going to take a film course," and it was like, Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut and Buñel... So I made a conscious decision. The decision was like OK, either I'm going to have fun, drink lots of beer and have sex in college, or I'm going to learn to love Godard and Fassbinder. And fortunately I picked the latter. Now I've ended up with this kind of sensibility where I want to serve all these different masters, be it Buñel or Harold Ramis.

It also comes from the fact that I'm a natural lazy person. In fact, I make all my friends rate their deadly sins in order so I get a good sense of their personality. But sloth has always been my number one, even before lust. But to me sloth means I'm not going to get out of bed unless I'm doing something completely different than what I've done before. And this is a perfect project for me, because it has a very simple premise and yet you can combine a lot of movies within this one movie.

How did Simon Baker come to this production? He has done a lot of romantic comedy work (Something New and The Devil Wears Prada) and a lot of people remember him from The Guardian. What made you think he would be the perfect Roderick Blank?
Yeah, well the great thing about my script — and everything I write — is it's a pass/fail course. So no one comes in and says, "Well, I kind of liked it, but I have some problems." They're all like, "Dear God, I'm not coming into read for this!" or "My God, this is something I've never seen before!" And unlike Groucho Marx, I like people that want to have me be a member of their club. So by liking my script, they're already one of my favorite actors, and Simon definitely got it. I didn't write the script with Simon's picture pinned up above my writing table, but he ended up just fitting right in.

I didn't want it to be one of those movies where the geeky guy has never had sex, gets this golden lamp and suddenly it's boobies every night. I think Jude Law in Alfie was too pretty and too [much] the ladies' man. I wanted a guy that both men and women can think at the start of the movie is the perfect guy. And I think Simon is relatable in that way. And also the fact that he's Australian ended up being very important because Australians don't have, I have learned, hangups about sexuality and nudity that a lot of Americans do.

Not to the same extent...
Another thing is as far as thinking of characters in a role, I end up thinking of old actors, like actors that are dead, so I know I'm not going to get them. Like for Roderick it was Cary Grant, and I think for the role that Mindy Cohn plays was Thelma Ritter. Audrey Hepburn is a character. So I have those superego choices... Then everybody gets to make the parts their own.

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