Ryan Gosling in Lars and the Real Girl Courtesy of Fox Searchlight

READ MORE: Lars and the Real Girl review

Lars Lindstrom (Ryan Gosling) is a shy guy. He lives in the garage on the property he and his brother inherited from their parents in a small Midwestern town. He works diligently in an office at a nondescript job. At work, Margo (Kelli Garner) has a crush on him. But he cannot or will not recognize her romantic overtures. Gus, his brother (Paul Schneider) is unperturbed by his reclusive behavior but his sister-in-law, Karin (Emily Mortimer), is worried. But then a big box arrives one day and Lars brightens. A little later, Lars presents with pride his new girlfriend, Bianca, to Gus and Karin and the world at large. Bianca is beautiful, busty and a blessed with long eyelashes and a serene expression. Lars believes her to be of Danish and Brazilian extraction. But she is wheelchair-bound. And a sex doll.

Six Feet Under scribe Nancy Oliver received an Oscar nomination for her first-time script and in this exclusive chat a few days before the film's DVD release of Lars and the Real Girl reveals how the idea for the script crystallized from a chance encounter with a "real sex doll" website and her own experiences with people suffering from mental illness. Next up, Oliver will try her hand at directing an episode of her new vampire series and is working on a hush-hush southeastern Western. We can't wait.

Congrats on the Oscar nomination. What was that experience like, especially being nominated with two other women in a category that is frequently dominated by men?
Thank you! It was totally unexpected. Well, I was thrilled that there were so many women in the mix. That was really just such a bonus experience. And I liked all of them a lot. But the nomination itself — who knew? I had no idea. I didn't even know when they were going to announce anything and then my publicist said: "We'll call you in the morning." And I [said]: "Oh, you're crazy. Nothing is going to happen." So it was a complete head-exploding experience. I was just amazed by the whole experience. I never thought it would get anywhere out of my office.

You are perhaps best known for your work on Six Feet Under, and other television writing. How difficult was it for you to sit down and write a script for the big screen?
Well, actually, Lars was pretty much done before I started writing for Six Feet Under. It was written in about 2002 or 2003. I came from the theater so it took me about five years to really change my head around to learn how to write a screenplay and Lars was the first thing that I wrote that was worth reading at all. So, it was kind of a reverse process in that I did that screenplay first. Pretty much the script that I handed out to be read ended up being the shooting script. It wasn't a first draft I wrote. It was like the hundred-thousandth draft before I let anybody see it.

When did you begin writing Lars and The Real Girl and where did the kernel of the idea to explore a socially maladjusted young man's relationship with a sex doll come from?
The themes in the movie are themes I have been working with all my life. But the actual guy/doll theme came from a weird job that I had that put me in touch with a lot of lonely guys and some strange websites. And I found the real doll website and it crystallized something for me. I was kind of haunted by it. Even though I — like many people — was kind of put of by the idea of a story about a guy and a sex doll, I followed it anyway, and it ended up going in a different direction than I expected. I discovered the story as I went along.

Ryan Gosling in Lars and the Real Girl Courtesy of Fox Searchlight

When Lars' delusion becomes public, the community rallies around him in support. Everyone for the most part, except his brother, is understanding and brings his own practical, life-affirming views to the problem. Given that the film takes place in such a conservative part of the country, they are extremely open-minded. Would you say it is more about Lars and his problem than about anything else beyond that at a social level?
Right, exactly. And that was part of the point of it. When you are confronted with something like that on a very personal level, your reactions might be different than if you had you read it in the paper and didn't know the guy. Things change when you actually know the people and you see the pain that they are in. I didn't have this specific experience but I have certainly experienced small town small-mindedness and intolerance. The movie itself is a fable. So it was never my intention to communicate that it was the entire town that was behind him, and every single person was nice. It was just the people who were relevant to his story. Because the other people he would have been oblivious to — as you can see with his interaction with his brother. I still believe that compassion and tolerance are a natural part of our character as human beings. We just don't see much of that on TV or in films today. It is sort of out of fashion.