This One Night Only interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Director Will Gluck is no stranger to theatrical rom-coms. His previous outing, Anyone But You, was the theatrical smash hit of the 2023 holiday season. Positive word of mouth saw the film gaining box office momentum for multiple weeks. Now he returns with a gift for fans of the genre: One Night Only.
The premise focuses on Owen (Callum Turner) and Allie (Monica Barbaro), two thirty-somethings looking for a connection on the one night a year that premarital sex is legal in the United States of America.
LadyJenevia: One Night Only originates from a number one blacklist screenplay by Travis Braun. It’s full of satire and commentary on the state of modern dating and why that’s so difficult. How much of that satire and humor was in the original screenplay, and how much of what we see is your own comedic voice infused by reworking the material?
Gluck: Travis did a great job of building the idea, the concept, and an incredible script. Then, I meet the actors, decide who to cast, figure out what’s good about them, and what their strengths are. Monica sings. I wrote the thing about her singing. Callum is this great-looking guy. So, you want to put him in situations that kind of knock him down a peg. So… the naked scene.
It’s always a moving process, and making movies is a constantly changing dynamic. That’s the fun part. When you go on the streets of New York, you think of a good idea, and you do that. The Little Red Lighthouse meant a lot to me when I grew up. It’s all this movable stuff that all people put their ingredients as a team in there, and it becomes hopefully a movie that people want to watch.
LadyJenevia: One of your comedic signatures is a meta sense of humor. When I spoke to you about Anyone But You, I asked if you were using Natasha Bedingfield again in the film’s soundtrack to be self-referential about your own work and what you’re known for. You said at the time that it was purely coincidence, but now in One Night Only, we’ve got three cameos from Anyone But You Actors. There was a character once again wrestling with a hand dryer. You name dropped Much Ado About Nothing and Beatrix Potter when you’ve directed two Peter Rabbit movies. What inspired this move to fully embrace being meta about your own work in your new work?
Gluck: I think in all my work, there’s just as many [references]. I love doing that. It’s fun. It’s always a day of decision to do that kind of stuff. It always makes me happy and makes me laugh. I always love bringing old actors back for the new movies just so we can hang out with them. It’s fun.
Someone just asked me today, could they all exist in this universe? Well, because all my movies take place in modern day, of course they could. They could all be together. It’s not like this takes place on planet Neptune or something. So, yeah, they could totally. But I’m glad you found… I’m trying to think, did you miss any of the references, but that was pretty good. L
LadyJenevia: I tried to find your family. I feel like your family always cameos, but maybe it’s because I’m watching it on my laptop. I think if I see it on the big screen, it’ll be easier to find them.
Gluck: I think it’s because my daughters got older and now they don’t look like [they used to]. Yes, they’re definitely in it, my dad’s in it, and they all have pretty big parts.
LadyJenevia: [visibly surprised]
Gluck: You missed my dad?
LadyJenevia: Oh my god! From the plane in Anyone But You!
Gluck: Yes!
LadyJenevia: I’ll rewatch it. I will find him.
Gluck: My dad and my kids have been in every single one of my movies.
LadyJenevia: Music has a significant presence in your filmography and now again in One Night Only. We don’t have Natasha Bedingfield this time, but we do have this very wacky concept of pop songs being covered and lyrically rewritten to sell medical products. Was this a way of satirizing the overcommercialization of art and how that symbolically mirrors technology impeding human connections?
Gluck: You’re way too smart for this. You should be asking dopey questions. I’m not used to this.
LadyJenevia: I have at least one on here if we get to it.
Gluck: A dopey question? Okay.
It’s definitely my attempt to satirize the fact that we advertise drugs to patients in this country. It’s crazy to me that we advertise drugs for me to ask my doctor about a blood cancer drug. I think if I went to a blood cancer doctor, he or she might be up on this. It is also exactly what you said about the arts in this character [Allie]. Monica Barbaro is an incredible singer, and by any account, if she told people “I’m a New York City singer, and I sing in all these commercials,” it’s an incredible job, and she’s making it, but to her she feels less than because she can’t perform in front of people.
If you really want to get deep about this, the last interview of the day, it is the kind of thing about like… no matter how successful we think we are, there’s always something else. Someone just said to me just a second ago, “Why are rom coms second class movies?” and I was like, “Oh, you…” so they’re always something that tries to take you down.
LadyJenevia: Was that the reporter’s actual opinion or were they asking that from the perspective that that’s how they’re treated by the industry and pundits?
Gluck: There’s no way of knowing the answer to that question.
LadyJenevia: I love rom coms, but I will also say that they’re not treated well by the industry at large, and by the very pretentious cinephiles.
Gluck: He had an interesting answer. I asked him, ‘Why does he think that?’ and he says, “Because they’re thought of as women’s movies,” so it’s misogynistic, which is… I would think that’s the answer, to be honest.
LadyJenevia: This is the third new romcom I have seen released this year with Robyn in the soundtrack. Perhaps when you do your next romcom, we could get her and Natasha Bedingfield to record a duet together.
Gluck: Yes! Wait, so… Voicemails for Isabelle. What’s the other one?
LadyJenevia: People We Meet on Vacation.
Gluck: This is the theatre. We’re talking about movies in theatres, not on streamers.
LadyJenevia: I agree!
LadyJenevia: One Night Only introduces us to Owen and Allie who exist in a world where premarital sex is illegal except for one night a year. This leads to a greater sense of urgency to find a connection and also sets up lots of hijinks. What is your process and creative inspiration for coming up with these big sequences of physical comedy?
Gluck: It’s always about the actors. In order to make the movie, you figure out who to be in it. You spend time with the actors, and you want to start hanging out with them. Once you find out that they’re the right people for the movie, you see, “Oh my god, Callum Turner, he’s this ridiculously good-looking, gigantic British model. You have to take him down a peg.” So, how do we take him down a peg and make him self-effacing? That becomes: him being naked with the bubble wrap scene, right?
And then you have Monica Barbaro, who’s an incredible singer and very confident but also doesn’t want to put on that dress because she doesn’t feel comfortable. So how do we create her being uncomfortable in that dress? Have her run across the street with the mannequin. Even though it seems ridiculous to talk about in this ‘second class genre,’ it’s how to get set pieces out of character as opposed to just random things that could happen.
LadyJenevia: I think people forget that physical comedy built cinema as an art form. These titans who built it, Chaplin, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers. I’m never going to complain if it’s fun and whimsical.
Gluck: It’s hard to do and not make it feel like, “Oh, this is silly.” It has to feel like this character would have really made this decision. I can tell in this movie at that moment when Monica Barbaro decides to do that in the bodega, I know why she would make this decision. It makes complete sense to me.
LadyJenevia: Speaking of that, there’s a point in the film where both Owen and Allie are looking for something and the score was really fun during this sequence. It almost sounded like we were in one of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s movies. What were your notes or instructions that you gave for how you wanted the film score to enhance the storytelling?
Gluck: Este Haim, who did the score with Christopher Stracey, who did my last movie, too, we have a very close working relationship. I don’t like traditional score. The rest of my movies don’t really have scores. I said, “I don’t like score, but we need something. It has to feel like it’s a song that you wrote,” which means that if you notice the score in our movie, it’s almost all vocal. That’s all her, Este singing, and Chris Stracey singing. It’s hard to do, but they did such a good job. That thing you talked about, Soderbergh, Out of Sight is a big touchstone for me, so I’m glad you caught that. Instead of it just being percussion, it’s Este singing. It doesn’t feel like, “Oh, the filmmaker is just putting in score to make you feel something.” It’s like, “Oh, this is a song that’s playing in the background.” But that’s why they did such an amazing job on this movie.
LadyJenevia: I think I read in another interview you did about this film that you really went above and beyond to develop the lore and rules of this legislation and how the world exists under it. There’s a brief mention in the film of how queer people are able to skirt around this ‘one night only’ restriction in a way that the straights cannot. Could you elaborate a bit on that because I was so intrigued and I wanted to know more of what you meant by that.
Gluck: I will not elaborate on that, but there is a moment in the movie when Nicholas Braun’s character talks about the science behind it. You can elaborate within that, but I didn’t want to get specific. I just like the idea that this character played by Quintessa Swindell, who’s Monica’s roommate, is just like, “Oh, we know how to get around this. This is for you dummies.” I just love that concept. You see in the movie too, it’s for everybody. There [are] people of every sexuality doing that that night. But I just love the idea that ‘$5,000 is worth more than this right now, for me.’ That was the idea of this cuz that’s how much she got paid not to go out that night.
LadyJenevia: Whether this is for Callum and Monica specifically or just broadly speaking across your films in general, what are you looking for to determine chemistry in your romantic leads?
Gluck: It’s kind of what I said before. It’s if I want to hang out, if I want to watch them hang out together, if I want to spend a lot of time being with them, going to dinner with them, just watching them be together, then I really believe that’s chemistry. That means I think that you’re going to want to watch them be together. Sometimes I like being with someone; I like being with the other person, but when they’re together, I don’t really like watching them be together.
I always say it’s like high school. If you want to put two people together to do a project, a group project, I like this person, I like this [other] person, will they work? And then once they’re together and you say, “Oh, I love watching these people do stuff together.” That’s the moment.
LadyJenevia: There are many famous films set in New York City, be they romcoms or otherwise. And one of the ones that you reference heavily in this film is An Affair to Remember. What drew you towards that particular film and its story to thread into One Night Only?
Gluck: Not to give it away, but there’s a very important postcard from An Affair to Remember that plays heavily in this movie. It’s a very New York City-based concept and a very old traditional concept of what a romantic moment is. To me, that is An Affair to Remember. It kind of set the table for that, and those characters- I love the way they speak to each other. They’re the OGs. They’re the ones that did everything we kind of trope. Someone had to start the trope. So that movie and this postcard, which you’ll see, what happens and what does not happen in the end of this movie is what drew me to An Affair to Remember.
LadyJenevia: I probably spelled this wrong in my notes, but I have to ask, because you wanted a silly question: Where did the name Salvatore Shohauffer Lopez come from?
Gluck: That’s a good question. It’s a completely made-up nonsense name. I just love names that are very specific and weird, and then, especially when you find out who that person is later on in the movie, when they show a picture of who that is, I think it’s just made up and funny.
LadyJenevia: I have a code phrase to share; it’s very important. “Sad eyes,” because I watched the commentary track from Anyone But You. Commentary tracks are an essential part of documenting film history. That’s why I nagged you so much about doing one for Anyone But You. Have you recorded one yet with Monica and Callum for the physical media release of One Night Only?
Gluck: We have not, but we have scheduled it. I’m glad you pushed that. I love doing them, too. It’s fun. The reason why I like doing them too is, you work so hard in a movie and then the actors go away, and then you edit. You come back together for ADR and stuff, but the commentary track is almost like a graduation party. Watching the movie when it’s all done, it’s really fun. We have scheduled it, and we will do one. I promise.
LadyJenevia: I am so thrilled to hear that.
LadyJenevia: You have LeVar Burton in this film and he’s well known for Reading Rainbow, and I noticed that you referenced a book about The Lighthouse. I would love for you to give a book recommendation as a way of getting people off of their phones and trying to find a meaningful connection. I find that books are a way for me to better connect with my audience and I promote books a lot and libraries.
Gluck: Yeah, but my books are like stupid non-fiction books.
LadyJenevia: I love non-fiction. Go ahead!
Gluck: Okay. The book I just read is an incredible book and actually, my daughter read it, too. Well, there’s two books. One is the one I just read. It’s called London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe, which is… do you know Patrick Redden Keefe?
LadyJenevia: Say Nothing.
Gluck: Yeah. Say Nothing, and then also the dope-sick stuff. He wrote a book called London Falling. It’s a very true story about a kid in London who… I won’t tell you, but that’s a great book. The other book that I read, my daughter also just read coincidentally, it’s called Yesteryear and they’re making a movie out of it. It’s a great book about tradwives but then there’s a big twist on it. It’s a great book. Anne Hathaway is making a movie on it. We tried to do it but Anne Hathaway scooped us. That’s it’s a really good book if you haven’t read it, Yesteryear.
LadyJenevia: I probably will because I do source material videos so I’ll get to that at some point. My recommendation is [Joan by Donald Spoto]. I’m reading every book about Joan of Arc at my local library because Baz Luhrmann is doing a movie on her.
Gluck: Who’s playing Joan?
LadyJenevia: An unknown named Isla Johnston. Nobody casts unknowns anymore, let alone to lead a big movie.
Gluck: Yeah, it’s hard.
LadyJenevia: Thank you so much for your time, Will. Congratulations.
Gluck: Thanks for being supportive. I really appreciate it.
One Night Only will release in cinemas on August 7.
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One Night Only opens in theaters on August 7.