As much as I dislike the works of author Nicholas Sparks, I have to admit that THE NOTEBOOK may be the most tolerable. Yes, it is tripe and overly sentimental, but the romance between Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams feels genuine. And then I heard the news that Gosling and McAdams did not get along during production on the Nick Cassavetes film. In fact, Cassavetes revealed that Gosling wanted McAdams fired from the production.
In a recent interview with VH1 about THE NOTEBOOK, Cassavetes shared a story from the set that almost imploded the entire film.
“Ryan came to me, and there’s 150 people standing in this big scene, and he says, “Nick come here.” And he’s doing a scene with Rachel and he says, “Would you take her out of here and bring in another actress to read off camera with me?” I said, “What?” He says, “I can’t. I can’t do it with her. I’m just not getting anything from this.”
At that point, to try and resolve the issues between the stars, Cassavetes and crew put them into a trailer and let the two scream it out. This apparently worked.
“I walked out. At that point I was smoking cigarettes. I smoked a cigarette and everybody came out like, ‘All right let’s do this.’ And it got better after that. They had it out… I think Ryan respected her for standing up for her character and Rachel was happy to get that out in the open. The rest of the film wasn’t smooth sailing, but it was smoother sailing.”
While we may never know which scenes were filmed prior to their on-set breakup and which came after, I know that I will probably stop and watch THE NOTEBOOK next time I come across it on cable, just to see if that is love in Ryan Gosling‘s eyes or true, unadulterated hate for Rachel McAdams. In fact, it may just make the movie a little more enjoyable.
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