iPod Coached Actors in Rom Com, 500 Days of Summer

When boy meets girl in comedy 500 Days of Summer, he’s wearing an iPod. She hears The Smith’s “There is a Light that Never Goes Out” emoting from his headphones and they’re off.

That’s nothing new: the iPod crops up in plenty of movies. But this may be the first time a director used one to coach actors.

Director Marc Webb, who comes to the big screen from the music video world, gave actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel iPod Minis to help them prep.

Webb packed the devices with songs that he listened to while breaking down the script. The actors also had a playlist designed to  convey the mood he was going after on each day of shooting. Deschanel told the WSJ she particularly liked day 44, dominated by Regina Specktor.
Webb bristles at the rom-com label, but from the description and trailer, it sounds like rom-com but with an oh-so-ironic twist:

After our hero spends a great evening with heroine, he bounds out of her house with a bounce in his step and a dance routine stolen from a million musicals breaks out, set to Hall & Oates’ “You Make My Dreams.”

Webb told NPR that particular song is probably overused in movies — but that’s part of the joke. “It’s like a shorthand for joy,” he says. “We’re trying to relate what’s going on inside somebody’s head, not the objective reality of it.”

“500 days of Summer” hits screens July 17.

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Via NPR

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