Producer Lynda Obst, a best-selling author herself (Hello, He Lied: And Other Truths From the Hollywood Trenches), read a very early manuscript of Laura Zigman's debut novel, Animal Husbandry, and fell in love with it immediately. "I read it in loose pages, not even galleys, and I loved the sensibility," remembers Obst. "It was completely unique, which is hard to find because I've made a lot of romantic comedies. "

The story of one young woman's attempt to explain her heartbreak by using the model of animal behavior struck a familiar chord with Obst. "I am constantly theorizing about human and particularly male behavior," she says. "And, like Jane, I use scientific and socio-biological descriptions to get a handle on the inexplicable. "

Determined to turn Animal Husbandry into a motion picture, Obst felt that the novel's central character, Jane Goodale (who was loosely based on Laura Zigman's own experiences as a publicist), was someone to whom many moviegoers could easily relate. "I would describe Jane as a really smart, vulnerable modern woman who wants it all, but in a very simple way," says Obst. "She wants to be able to be loved for who she is, have a job and realize her dreams. " Obst's enthusiasm about Zigman's book was soon shared by many, as the novel became very popular.

Obst hired screenwriter Elizabeth Chandler to adapt Zigman's book. "Elizabeth Chandler can write anything," says Obst, who had been looking for a project for the writer. "We had a meeting and she made me laugh. I gave her the novel and she adored it."

"I knew probably within the first thirty pages that I definitely wanted to do it," says Chandler. "I just thought it was hilarious. I hadn't written a romantic comedy in a while, and I loved the story's romantic angst. It's about issues we all deal with and we're neurotic about, and it had a take on it that I had never seen explored or seen before. "

After sending the script to some of Hollywood's top comedic actors, Obst learned that Ashley Judd was very interested in the part of Jane. While Judd had received acclaim for her roles in dramas or thrillers such as Ruby in Paradise (1993) Kiss the Girls (1997), and Heat (1995) she had not been known for romantic comedies.

"I was surprised because I never thought of Ashley as a New York journalist type," says Obst. "But she walked into my office like a Ph. D. in anthropology, sat down, and really impressed me. She was astonishingly intellectual, incredibly verbal and totally New York. Cool and smart. "

"I decided at that point if Ashley was willing to put her heart and soul on the line and do this film, I could see that this was the piece that would help define a new range for herself," says Obst "Ashley has that elusive quality that makes a great movie star. She is your girlfriend, she could be you, you root for her and genuinely like her. "

Judd shared Obst's enthusiasm for the project, and she embraced the challenges of the role of Jane Goodale. "The appeal of the script had a lot to do with the fact it was uncharted territory for me," says Ashley Judd. "It was unlike anything I'd ever done. ANIMAL ATTRACTION had such comedic possibilities - a lot of times at my expense - and seeing as how the humor in my family has usually come at my expense, I thought maybe it won't be so hard after all. "

With Ashley Judd aboard, Obst approached actor/director Tony Goldwyn, with whom she had collaborated on another project, about directing ANIMAL ATTRACTION. Goldwyn's acclaimed directorial debut, Walk on the Moon, a (1999) had convinced Obst that he was the right person for the job. "It made me weep and I understood from seeing that film how well he understood women," she explains.

"Lynda asked me if I was interested and told me that Ashley was involved," Goldwyn relates. "And I thought what a brilliant role for Ashley Judd. I thought it was a perfect match."

Having acted with Judd in the motion picture thriller Kiss the Girls (1997) Goldwyn already knew that she had a terrific sense of humor. "Ashley is really smart and has a great wit," he says. "The role also required strength and backbone. "

"ANIMAL ATTRACTION is about a girl who gets her heart broken and becomes completely obsessive about why men leave women. In order for the character and film to work, we needed an actress with a strong spine, and Ashley certainly fulfilled that requirement and much more. "

"Goldwyn's involvement was a turning point in the evolution of the script. There hadn't been a man around this script for years," says Obst. "Suddenly there was testosterone and a man's lens looking at this thing. Goldwyn, like Obst, brought numerous ideas to the screenplay. His first change centered on Ray and Eddie, the male characters from Zigman's book."

"Funny as they were, both Ray and Eddie were really reprehensible men in the novel," says Goldwyn. "I thought it would be more interesting if it we didn't just trash men, but show everyone has a point of view. " So Goldwyn took steps to make Ray more realistic. The character, who is the executive producer of the show that Jane works on, and who sets the story in motion by falling in love with Jane and then breaking her heart, was key to the film.

"It's very important to me that this relationship be one that we invest in and we fall in love with Ray, as Jane does," Goldwyn explains. "Ray's been involved with another woman in a relationship that he's disenchanted with, and he falls head over heels in love with Jane, over-commits himself and realizes he can't go the distance with her and ends up breaking her heart. "

In order to ensure that Ray remains sympathetic, even when he breaks up with Jane for no apparent reason, the filmmakers cast popular comic actor and Academy Award nominee Greg Kinnear. "Greg has tremendous charm and is a truly great comedian," says Goldwyn. "He makes Ray terribly human and intelligent so you can't make a judgment on the guy. "

Kinnear sees Ray as someone who is striving to balance his professionalism with his personal life. "Ray is very much a part of a working family unit, and he has to betray that because he's swept up in a relationship," says the actor. "Jane provides him with a support system that he's not getting from his current girlfriend. "

When Ray dumps Jane, she is completely thrown for a loop and tries to find an explanation for what's happened. "When Jane's heart is broken, she retreats to her mind to protect her heart, so she doesn't have to feel again," Obst explains. Jane comes up with a theory that states that male philandering is instinctual. "She comes upon an article in The New York Times about bovine male behavior that says once a bull has mated with a given cow, he will not go back to that cow a second time," says Goldwyn. "So Jane says, wait, that's just like guys. "

"You can gussey 'em up, you can dress 'em up, put a little perfume on 'em, but the bull knows old cow," laughs Kinnear. "Ray is looking for a new cow. "

One person who seems to exemplify Jane's newfound theory is her co-worker at the "Diane Roberts Live" TV show, Eddie Alden. "Eddie is a complete womanizer and has no sentimentality about romance," says Goldwyn. "He and Jane are always at odds with each other. Even though they're in a certain sense great friends, they're like a brother and sister who can never get along. " For the role of Eddie, the filmmakers cast Hugh Jackman, whose first American film, X-Men (2000), for which he won raves in the role of "Wolverine," had not yet been released.

Obst and Goldwyn had both been impressed by Jackman, who had also received critical acclaim for his work in musical theater in his native Australia and in London, when they met him on an earlier project. "He came into my office and sang 'Oklahoma' a capella, so I fell madly in love with him," says Obst. "And any time you see a great new guy who's that hot, you want to see him in a romantic comedy. "

"Hugh has this tremendous sex appeal and charisma as a screen actor," adds Goldwyn. "But mainly what I found most interesting about Hugh as Eddie is the contrast. While Eddie is a cad, Hugh has a heart the size of western Australia. If we had a different kind of actor Eddie would easily become unlikable. "

Jackman describes Eddie as a confirmed bachelor who "works hard and plays very hard. " In fact, Eddie's proclivity toward one-night stands illustrates his own theory of love. "He sees that the search for true love and soul mates as being basically a pipe dream," says Jackman. "Jane calls him 'The Poster Bull,' the classic bull. Once he's made love to a girl, he's bored, he just wants to move on. He doesn't want commitment. "

When Jane is forced to move in with Eddie because her plans with Ray have been dashed, Jane and Eddie's differences come to the fore. "They're sort of Hepburn and Tracy of the modern era," says Jackman. "Politically and philosophically they're very different. They kind of tease each other and argue with each other, but by the end of the day they're very fond of each other because they're honest and blunt. "

Both Obst and Goldwyn saw strong chemistry between Ashley Judd and each of the two male leads. "Greg and Ashley just hit it off and have the same sense of humor and would improvise these really hilarious things," says the director. "And as soon as Ashley and Hugh got in a room together it was the same thing, yet of a very different nature. "

Another of Jane's friends who is brutally honest with her but offers very different advice about men is her best friend Liz, an editor at a men's magazine. When Liz's own love life goes awry, she encourages Jane to share her new-found theories with the world by offering her a column in the magazine.

For the role of Liz, Academy Award-winning actress Marisa Tomei was always at the top of Tony Goldwyn's list. "Marisa is a really fantastic actress who is also a great comedienne and I knew she would bring a lot of depth to the part," explains the director. "Also, because she is in search of a guy and is always giving Jane advice on guys, it was really important for us to cast someone very sexy and very smart. "

Tomei herself was attracted to the part of Liz, whom she describes as "a good, old-fashioned broad," for the opportunity to work with Goldwyn, because she had loved his film Walk on the Moon, a (1999) "I was very interested to do anything he was going to be doing," she explains.

After work one night Liz and Jane come up with a pseudonym to accompany her new column, which Jane insists on writing anonymously. "We call her Dr. Marie Charles," a combination of Madame Curie and Charles Darwin, "and we thereby endow her with all this authority," says Tomei. "We make her an elderly psychiatrist who studied at the Vienna Institute of Pathological Narcissism. " Jane's column becomes a sensation, much to the surprise of both women. "It gets picked up on 'Oprah' and on talk radio, and it winds up being syndicated - it's something that everyone's talking about," says Tomei.

With the growing national interest in a sex columnist who doesn't exist, Jane is in the awkward position of being unable to book 'Dr. Marie Charles', the one guest that her boss, Diane Roberts, wants most of all on her show.

"My boss, who is a cross between Charlie Rose and Diane Sawyer, wants to get Dr. Marie Charles on the show, and so she keeps talking about where she is, let's go find her," says Judd. Because the show has just gone national, the pressure is on all at the show to book the mysterious and elusive author. "And of course I'm sitting there knowing it's really me," Judd adds.

For the role of the glamorous talk show host Diane Roberts, who inspires her staff to "get the ungettable get," the filmmakers cast acclaimed actress Ellen Barkin. "Who else?" Lynda Obst asks. "She's sexy, she's smart, she's funny and at the top of her game. I couldn't imagine anyone else. "

"Diane Roberts is a feminist in that she's come a long way and she's worked hard to get where she is. She doesn't want to lose that on any level," says screenwriter Elizabeth Chandler. Diane has her own philosophies about love that she shares with broken-hearted Jane. "If you let your emotions show, you can't function as a man in the working place, which Diane feels is a necessity to get anywhere," explains Chandler.

"A lot of what this movie is about is how different people develop policies on matters of the heart," says Tony Goldwyn. "And trying to control what can't be controlled, and making sense of what can't be made sense of. "

But in the end, Jane finds the courage to move beyond Dr. Marie Charles. "I think the movie is about the bravery of taking another swing at bat, whether it be writing another article, trying another boyfriend, or another job," explains Obst. "Just getting out there and doing again what once broke your heart. "

About The Production

During a time when many other filmmakers have opted to shoot in Canada, ANIMAL ATTRACTION producer Lynda Obst and director Tony Goldwyn insisted on shooting in the Big Apple. "I thought New York should be a character in the movie," says Goldwyn. "There is a kind of pressure on people's lives in New York both to find success and to find love, and the stakes tend to be higher. "

"We wanted a real look, that doesn't look like a TV movie," adds Obst. "We had to sell the idea that we could shoot the movie like a studio independent movie and use practical locations. We wanted this movie to be mainstream downtown New York. "

In fact, ANIMAL ATTRACTION shot almost exclusively below 14th Street: in Greenwich Village, Little Italy, Tribeca, and Soho.

Production designer Dan Leigh, who had designed Goldwyn's Walk on the Moon, a (1999) and many other New York-based movies, found locations that were rarely seen on film. "We wanted to show New York in a landmark way, like the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center, but from new views and angles so that it became an insider New York story," Leigh explains.

For example, Jane's apartment, a small studio with no real view, was located in a rarely photographed part of Chinatown. While the interior was built in the rehearsal space of the Ohio Theater in Soho, the exterior was shot east of the area of Chinatown that tourists frequent, on Catherine Street. When Jane and Ray fall in love and decide to move in together, they find a beautiful apartment with a huge terrace in Greenwich Village.

"When she meets Ray, not only does she find who she perceives to be Mr. Right, but she's also found the ultimate New York apartment," explains Leigh. "So when Ray is not interested in her any longer, not only does she lose the guy, but she loses this incredible apartment. " A true New York story.

When Ray breaks up with her, Jane is left with nowhere to live, so she reluctantly moves in with her co-worker Eddie. "She ends up with Mr. Wrong in this horrible loft in the meatpacking district," says Leigh. Eddie's apartment was filmed in a real loft just down the street from the bar Hogs & Heifers, a famed institution for hard-drinking New York City cowgirls and cowboys, where Eddie spends much of his free time. The production also shot in the actual bar, where Hugh Jackman did some of his research into the life of a New York bachelor.

"Of course I had to go to Hogs & Heifers," says Jackman. "I'm not a confirmed bachelor myself, but I was here in New York a few nights on my own when I was doing some research and I told my wife, it's been five years we've been married, and I'm out of touch, and she said, 'Sure, you get back on the next plane. '"

The production also filmed in such popular downtown New York restaurants as Old Homestead Steakhouse, Anglers and Writers, and Cafe Habana. In fact, Goldwyn arranged for much of the extensive rehearsal time to take place in the actual locations where the film was to be shot, something that he himself would have enjoyed as an actor.

"Tony said that he just thought to himself, 'Well, what would my perfect world be like as an actor on the set?" says Marisa Tomei. "And he did just that. And it paid off for us. "

Other research included visits to talk shows such as 'Ricki Lake', 'Queen Latifah', and particularly, 'The View', in order to create the fictional 'Diane Roberts Show', where Jane's work and love life become entwined. The filmmakers created the television show in a theater at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center.

Because Greg Kinnear had hosted two talk shows himself - "Talk Soup" and "Later with Greg Kinnear" - he didn't need to do much research for his role as the show's executive producer. But he did view the show from a new perspective in the role of Ray. "I had years of getting my butt kissed, basically, as host," he jokes. "'Do you need anything, Mr. Kinnear?' Now my character has to deal with the Diane Roberts character all day long, for weeks on end. 'Can I get you anything, Diane? Do you need any coffee?' So it was humbling. "

To create the offices of "M Magazine," where Marisa Tomei's Liz serves as editor, production designer Dan Leigh and his team studied the home of Brant Publications, which includes the offices of Interview, Art in America, and Antiques magazines. Tomei's research into magazine editing consisted mainly of speaking with producer Lynda Obst, who had begun her career as a journalist, most notably as an editor at The New York Times Magazine.

To add to the film's realistic look, Tony Goldwyn called upon famed cinematographer Anthony B. Richmond, with whom he had collaborated on Walk on the Moon, a (1999) "I didn't want a sort of glossy, sort of storybook kind of New York romantic comedy," says Goldwyn. "Tony makes people look real and yet really, really beautiful. And he's very fast and I found him to be a great creative partner. "

Goldwyn also enjoyed his creative partnership with Lynda Obst. "I didn't really understand what a producer is all about until I started working with Lynda," he says. "Lynda was fiercely protective over me, and over the project. She always challenged me to make things better. "