The Girl Next Door (2004 film)  

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The Girl Next Door is a 2004 teen film starring Elisha Cuthbert and Emile Hirsch, directed by Luke Greenfield, about an honors student's pining love for the girl next door, who is really a porn star.

Plot

Ambitious Westport High School senior Matt Kidman (Emile Hirsch) dreams of a career in politics. He plans to attend Georgetown University if he can gain a prestigious, upcoming scholarship by performing a speech demonstrating "moral fiber". But looking back on his life, Matt struggles to find anything that he will "always remember", and feels he has done nothing outrageous and memorable during high school. However, his luck changes when he immediately falls in love with the girl next door, Danielle (Elisha Cuthbert), who has recently moved in. Shortly after meeting him, Danielle asks, "What's the craziest thing you've done lately?" Matt admits to her that he has done nothing crazy in his life. Danielle soon fixes his situation by pushing him to "do things he never thought he could do", allowing him to gain much respect from the rest of the school. Matt also wins Danielle's heart and is finally able to feel more content about his life. However, his relationship with Danielle is challenged when he discovers through his obnoxious porn-addled friend Eli (Chris Marquette) that she used to be an adult film actress known by her fans as "Athena".

Following Eli's poor advice to have sex with her, Matthew takes Danielle to a sleazy motel. Danielle quickly realises Matt's intentions upon discovering her past, and decides to punish him by performing a humiliating striptease and offering herself to him sexually. When Matt becomes distressed, Danielle calls him on wanting to "fuck a porn star in a cheap motel room" and, feeling upset and hurt by his shallow reaction, abruptly ends the relationship. When he attempts to reconcile with her later, he learns that she is returning to the porn industry and leaving for Las Vegas with her ex-boyfriend, porn producer Kelly (Timothy Olyphant).

Desperate to win her back, Matt and his friends Eli and Klitz (Paul Dano) follow Danielle to Las Vegas and find her performing at an adult film convention. Kelly becomes afraid that he might lose his business if Danielle left, and menacingly warns Matt not to interfere with her. Ignoring Kelly's threats, Matt manages to convince Danielle not to rejoin the industry and returns to Westport with him, restarting their relationship. Infuriated by his actions, Kelly abducts Matt from school and attacks him, saying that Danielle's failure to arrive on set has cost him $30,000. Kelly offers to let him erase his debt by breaking into rival producer Hugo Posh's home to steal an award statuette, but after Matt has entered the house, Kelly calls in a robbery report and leaves the premises, making him a scapegoat. Matt narrowly avoids the police and rushes to his scholarship dinner with Danielle. High on ecstasy that Kelly implied was a painkiller and despite Danielle's attempts to calm him down, Matt horrifies his audience with his outrageous behaviour. However he still manages to improvise a deeply sentimental speech based on his relationship with Danielle, claiming that "moral fiber is about finding that one thing you really care about". But despite his efforts, he loses the scholarship, ruining his chance of going to Georgetown.

Kelly then gets his money back by withdrawing $25,000 from an account Matt opened to bring Samnang, a brilliant Cambodian student, to study in the United States (not wanting to explain his connections to the adult film industry, Matt had previously introduced Kelly to the bank staff as his student adviser). Fearing that he will face expulsion or criminal charges for his unwitting role in the fraud, he turns to Danielle for help. Danielle calls in a few friends from her days as a porn star, and they agree to make a video for Hugo Posh on prom night and on school grounds. After the successful shoot, Eli is dropped off with the tape's master copy. Alone together in the limousine, Danielle again asks Matt, "What's the craziest thing you've done lately?" Reflecting on how much Danielle has done for him in the past week, Matt makes love to her for the first time.

The next morning, Matt is shocked to discover Kelly, in possession of the tape he has stolen from Eli's home, with his parents and school principal at the dining room table. Kelly asks to speak privately with Matt, then tells him that unless he is given half of all profits he will play the tape immediately. Matt refuses because the money rightfully belongs to Samnang. Kelly repeats his threat, and Matt, following Danielle's advice to "just go with it", says that he no longer cares about his future. As the tape begins to play, it becomes clear that Matt and his friends have made a progressive, comprehensive sex ed tape rather than a pornographic film and is left unpunished. With no more cards left to play, Kelly, completely humiliated, finally admits defeat.

In the film's closing montage, we learn the fates of the film's central characters, including Kelly, Eli, and Klitz. Hugo Posh and Matt make millions from the video, although Matt serves as Posh's "silent partner" and his involvement is largely kept secret. Posh keeps his word and pays for Samnang to come to the USA, while Matt has enough money to pay for his own scholarship to Georgetown University, as well as taking Danielle to DC with him. Looking back on what he will "always remember" in high school, Matt's story ends with success: getting a promising future in politics and, most of all, the girl next door.

Cast

Production

Project began development at the end of 1999 with the first draft of the script delivered in early 2000. Christopher McKenna, who is mentioned in the director's commentary on the DVD, is responsible for the basic story structure and plot of the completed movie (due to a Writer's Guild arbitration hearing, he was stripped of all credit. Furthermore, according to Eli Roth (Hostel, etc.) in an interview on June 5, 2007 on KITS "LIVE 105", McKenna got the story idea and the actual dialogue from conversations he had with Roth while Roth was in the editing studio for one of his movies. Eli Roth actually did date "the porn star next door" among others, and McKenna listened to his stories and turned it into this movie. This claim however does not hold up when researching the actual development of the film. Agent Don Buchwald approached his producer friend Harry Gittes in 1999 about an episode of Howard Stern's radio show in which a high school student was set up with a porn star. Gittes brought the project to Charles Gordon, whose executive Marc Sternberg supervised a script originally written by David Wagner and Brent Goldberg. McKenna's involvement was at the behest of director Luke Greenfield, who collaborated on the script with him. David Kartch was previously attached to direct, but dropped out and was replaced by Luke Greenfield in 2002. Producers Charles Gordon and Marc Sternberg, as well as studio executive Peter Cramer, had earlier worked together as the producers of October Sky, which also featured a teenager's attempts at social mobility.

According to the DVD commentary, the character of Eli is based on writer/director Luke Greenfield. Much of the production staff make direct appearances within the film, as does Greenfield's mother, his assistant, the producer, and the producers' assistants. Additionally, the prom in the film takes place in the cafeteria, much in the same way as the director's. Other locations included Santa Clarita (many school scenes shot at the College of the Canyons in Valencia), South Pasadena, the Masonic Lodge of Pasadena, Long Beach, and Hollywood (including a porn convention sequence shot at the Ren-Mar studios on Cahuenga Boulevard). The first kiss between Matt and Danielle was shot on March 10, 2003 in the backyard of a house on Capri Drive north of Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades. It was the first shot of a night that began at 8pm and ended at 5am. Unusually for the area, temperatures dipped into the high 30s, necessitating that portable gas heaters be brought in for the actors and extras.

Shooting in Agoura Hills was briefly halted to retrieve one of the parrots which was meant to attack Hirsch, but instead flew up a nearby tree. As Hirsch was still a minor during production, all of his nude scenes were performed by a stunt double. For a lap dance scene, several pillows were placed between him and the dancer. Despite all this consideration, it is noted that the champagne drunk in the limo by the underage actors near the end of the movie was real. All scenes showing topless models were also shot in PG-13 versions. Two extras were injured during shooting at Ren-Mar studios in Hollywood, CA, during the scene where Matt "Horshu" Wiese chases Eli and Klitz. Hirsch himself was hurt whilst filming a fight sequence with Timothy Olyphant.

Principal photography ended in late March but two days of pickups, mostly comprising the scenes from the opening montage, were shot in Santa Clarita on April 24 and 25. The first cut of the film ran 120 minutes, which was later cut to 108 minutes. There are several rare versions of the one-sheet, in which Hirsch's inset character wears a blue rather than red shirt, and others in which the uncredited Christopher McKenna is given a "Screenplay by" credit alongside Stuart Blumberg and Luke Greenfield. In these versions, original screenwriters David Wagner and Brent Goldberg receive "Story By" credit. This one-sheet, however, was not released to theaters. Budgeted at $19.9 million, the final project costs were $21 million.

The original release date was intended to be March 12, 2004, but was moved to April 9, 2004, which happened to be Good Friday. As a play on the title of a competing film, The Passion of the Christ, a marketing executive offered the tagline, "This Easter, experience a different kind of 'Passion'." This suggestion, however, was quickly shot down by studio brass. Despite security precautions, the film appeared in pirated versions on the Internet before its release, primarily due to extensive preview screenings. A high quality DVD transfer was also leaked before the home video release, which also was available for download through file sharing software.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "The Girl Next Door (2004 film)" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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