Drew Barrymore and Justin Long show how love is worth 'Going the Distance'

 Drew Barrymore and Justin Long at the Los Angeles premiere of "Going the Distance"

In the romantic comedy "Going the Distance," it was easy for stars Drew Barrymore and Justin Long to do their love scenes together. That’s because the two have been an on-again/off-again couple in real life. (According to reports in celebrity media, Barrymore and Long’s relationship has been "on again" during and after the making of "Going the Distance.") In the movie, Barrymore plays an aspiring journalist/Stanford grad student named Erin, who is interning at a New York City daily newspaper. While in New York City, she meets Garrett (played by Long), an A&R representative/talent scout at a record company. Erin and Garrett both know that Erin’s stay in New York is temporary, so they embark on a relationship that they initially think will just be a fling, but then Erin and Garrett end up falling in love.

When Erin’s internship ends and she has to go back to San Francisco, Erin and Garrett decide to continue their relationship. Their long-distance love affair is met with skepticism by Erin’s older married sister, Corinne (played by Christina Applegate) and Garrett’s two best friends: co-worker Box (played by Jason Sudeikis) and roommate Dan (played by Charlie Day). Not being to see each other in person for weeks at a time begin to take a toll on Erin and Garrett’s romance, and they have to make a decision to either break up or to continue their relationship by one of them relocating so that they can live in the same city. At the Los Angeles press conference for "Going the Distance," Barrymore, Justin Long, Applegate, Sudeikis, Day, director Nanette Burstein, producer Adam Shankman and producer Jennifer Gibgot sat down to talk about how they think the movie is more realistic than most other romantic comedies and what were some of their most memorable moments when they were making the film.

Justin Long and Drew Barrymore in "Going the Distance"

There’s a scene in "Going the Distance" where Erin and Garrett talk about their favorite music and movies. Drew and Justin, what are your top three albums and movies in real life?

Long: Albums? I would say … Bob Dylan, "Blood on the Tracks." Joni Mitchell, "Blue." And "Rubber Soul" [by the Beatles].

Shankman: You forgot the new Justin Bieber.

Long: Well, that’s assumed. "The Bieb’s Greatest Hits." "Leave It to Bieber."

Barrymore: I’m going to go with "Annie Hall," "Lost in America" and "Sullivan’s Travels." Those are some of my favorite movies.

Long: We’re not just doing movies.

Drew Barrymore and Justin Long in "Going the Distance"

Barrymore: OK, I’m on it. Spank me! No, I’m just kidding. Albums? Like a Radiohead album and a … I’m such a music nut, too. This is really sad. It’s like when someone says, "Let’s go to breakfast," and it’s like you’ve never eaten before, and your brain just goes blank. I’m going to call a brain blank on this one. I’m sticking with the movies.

Long: For what it’s worth: "Annie Hall," "Back to the Future" and "Way Out West." "Way Out West" is a sentimental movie for me.

Drew, Erin is more modern and outspoken than some of the romantic-comedy characters you’ve played. Did the fact that she was a more modern woman attract you to the part?

Barrymore: Yeah, I definitely was excited to play [Erin] … I just wasn’t in that place in my life where I wanted to play a cuckoo, wacky, role-reversal scenario ... You’re all travelers, and you try to make distance work with relationships, and someone who can hang out with guys, and loves women, but has spine and is funny. I feel like I relate to that kind of person right now in my life. So it was a pleasure for me to get to improv and work on a much more free-flowing way where you could play around, and you don’t have to be so censored, because you had an R rating. That, to me, was just an absolute pleasure.

"Going the "Distance" co-stars at the film's Los Angeles premiere. Pictured from left to right: Kelli Garner, Drew Barrymore, Justin Long, Christina Applegate, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis.

What was the most challenging scene in "Going in the Distance"?

Applegate: When I stared up into the cavities of … [She points to Long] But I love you.

Long: I love you too. She basically gave me a colonoscopy.

Applegate: I think it was the first day at work. That was the most challenging because Nanette kept saying, "When you come in and see [Erin and Garrett] naked, could you stare longer?’ And I physically couldn’t. There was no option. We almost got into an argument. I said, "Nanette, what’s actually, truthfully, naturally happening is that I’m not looking at it. I look at it, and I want to look away. And that’s how I feel. And that’s how the character would feel."

Long: It’s like looking into the face of God.

Applegate: He’s very Method. And there was no cover-up. And he was bent over. Think about it, OK?

Drew Barrymore and Christina Applegate in "Going the Distance"

Barrymore: Well, one of the challenges I was most excited about was doing the drunk scene, and me and Nanette really focused on what type of drunk is she, and what can we ad-lib, and what can be spontaneous. Like, if you were really angry, how would you just let loose? It was the most fun day at work ever, because I just really let loose.

Long: Like a monkey flinging poo. I would say some of the naked stuff was a little uncomfortable, but I think the most challenging was trying to keep a straight face around these clowns.

Day: That’s very nice of you, Justin.

Sudeikis: What was the question?

Long: See what I mean? You’re now experiencing my challenges. A lot of this intimate, sexual stuff around a room full of 30, 40 grown men was a challenge.

Day: Oh, that’s the only way I get off.

Sudeikis: He’s not kidding.

Christina Applegate and Drew Barrymore in "Going the Distance"

Drew and Christina, how did you feel about portraying sisters?

Barrymore: I thought it was interesting. I thought we started to really look alike, which I thought was cool. I love when people cast siblings that actually feasibly could have come from the same womb, so I felt like we started to morph. We used to be in a dance class together when we were kids, but she looked really good in spandex, and I did not.

Applegate: So I made a career out of it.

Barrymore: I celebrated it. I was horrified in the corner, but I’ve known her forever.

Applegate: We kind of look at each other, and I kind of feel like I kind of know [her] more than she knows me on that kind of level that you don’t really talk about. So I think that being sisters was really easy.

Barrymore: Yeah. We have a lot of parallels. It worked for us.

Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day in "Going the Distance"

Jason and Charlie, you both come from doing work on TV: Jason on "Saturday Night Live" and Charlie on "It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia." How did improv work for you in doing "Going the Distance"? Is doing a movie easier or harder than doing TV?

Day: I think your answer and mine will be very different.

Sudeikis: We’ll see. [He laughs.]

Day: For me, it’s different from our show, because we have a very different way of shooting it. I’m behind the monitors a lot and have, with my partners in the show, a lot of creative control in that department. So it was a little of trusting what Nanette was doing and saying, "This can all cut together." And we weren’t constantly crossing it, so we all had to sort of remember improvisations, which we don’t really have to do on our show. We’re always covering all the angles at the same time.

But outside of that, it wasn’t too different. We got to play and play and play. And if we hit on something really good, Nanette would write it down and bring it to us. And as you see, it all cuts together beautifully and it’s super-funny. I was actually learning things, being a part of it. [He says to Sudeikis] I’ll try to take your job next.

Pictured clockwise from left: Justin Long, Drew Barrymore, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day in "Going the Distance"

Sudeikis: There you go. A challenge.

Day: Not really. I don’t want to do that.

Sudeikis: We don’t improvise at all on "SNL," although some people think we do. Maybe little things in the middle, but because of the live editing, you have the hit the cue the way you’re supposed to or the director gets in trouble, more so than the actor. So it was easy. We tend to do things a little bit broader, a little bit bigger on a sketch show, and present it in a different way. I would say the movie ["Going the Distance"] would be what it would be like to watch the three of us [Long, Sudeikis and Day] hang out typically, almost identical to that, to a degree, depending on what we’re talking about.

Long: I just called you Box.

Sudeikis: That was a happy accident.

 Pictured from left to right: "Going the Distance" producers Jennifer Gibgot and Adam Shankman, Drew Barrymore and Warner Bros. President of Worldwide Marketing Sue Kroll at the Los Angeles premiere of "Going the Distance"

Adam and Jennifer, you’re siblings, so what was it working on "Going the Distance" together?

Shankman: Well, we traded off, because we were actually shooting three movies at the same time — literally at the same time — two were in New York and one was in Savannah [in Georgia]. So we would just doing it like a rotation. And I’d come on to set, and I’d call he and go, "This is crazy!" It was crazy funny, but it had a very mayhem attitude that really worked for the movie. And Nanette was kind of the ringmaster for all of it. So for me, mostly, it was sitting back and letting her do her thing. Because I’m a director, I think it’s really important to respect what the director does, because I don’t want people telling me what to do.

Gibgot: It was hardest on the script supervisor. She would throw down her script every day and storm out. And we’d be like, "OK."

Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day in "Going the Distance"

Nanette, as a female director how did you deal with some of the sensitive issues that are shown in the film?

Burstein: Like Charlie [Day] on the toilet? We try to have a lot of fun, but they are also very serious scenes, emotional scenes, but there was a lot of comedy and a lot of improvisation. And I remember saying to Charlie and Jason, "We’re going to shoot the script this time." And they said, "Oh, there’s a script?"

Sudeikis: In our defense …

Day: That might have been a joke, because there were lots of funny things that were in the script that ended up in the movie. I don’t want to be taking full credit.

Sudeikis: But I have read it recently, and it is a hoot. It’s a good script.

Drew Barrymore and Justin Long in "Going the Distance"

The key moment in any romantic comedy is that first kiss. When you see something like that, and you know it’s in the script, is it something you think about or is it just part of the role?

Long: Yeah, I was like, "Necessary evil. OK, here we go." No, the first kiss for us in the movie was very sloppy. We [our "Going the Distance" characters] were drunk. We were stoned. We were stoned, and it was just so easy to do. It was so comfortable.

I like to think about … my grandmother, just because she’s always been an inspiration to me, in my life. I think you just hope that you’re invested in the scene, hopefully, and sometimes it can be a surprise when you’ve never kissed anyone before you’ve just met recently. And people have different ways with kissing, and sometimes it can be very jarringly uncomfortable. There can be very little movement involved, and then a quick, sudden movement from the tongue that you don’t expect.

Sudeikis: I had just had a tooth pulled. Excuses.

Barrymore: I just was lucky, for me, because he’s a good kisser. So I was like, "Phew! Thank God!" It’s the worst when you’re kissing someone who’s not a good kisser, and you’re trying to make it look good, and you feel like you’re just working on your own. At least it was a real team effort, you know?

Long: She’s a great kisser, too. I just want to reiterate. Right back at you.

Justin Long and Drew Barrymore in "Going the Distance"

Drew, you had a scene in "Going the Distance" where you and Justin exchange gifts which are sentimental items that are owned by your characters in the film. What’s your most cherished item in your house?

Barrymore: Any of my dogs are my most cherished thing, I’d have to say.

The dialogue in "Going the Distance" is very realistic in how it addresses adult issues. Can you comment on that?

Shankman: I want to say something about that really quickly. One of the most important things going into this movie that we talked about with Nanette — before there was even a cast — was that there had to be a lot of honesty in the movie, which is why it couldn’t be anything but [rated] R. Adult relationships, this is key. People who live in modern places and urban environments, they have to be honest. So you can’t do a good comedy without it coming from something that’s very grounded and real at its core. So it was always very important that that honesty be present.

Burstein: I think what we were trying to do, tonally, it’s different from a traditional romantic comedy. People are uncensored. There’s a very grounded story about feelings and emotions. And you really care about these characters. From the get-go, that was always our intention to make this movie as honest as possible.

Drew Barrymore (pictured at far left), director Nanette Burstein (pictured with headphones) and Justin Long on the set of "Going the Distance"

Nanette, how did you decide to cast Drew Barrymore and Justin Long in "Going the Distance"?

Burstein: I’ve been a fan of both of them for a long time. They’re both great comic, dramatic actors, and they have great chemistry together. So it was a no-brainer.

In "Going the Distance," Erin and Garrett are obviously a couple, but Box and Dan are also kind of like a couple — or at least a tag team for Garrett. Jason and Charlie, can you talk about your roles?

Day: We’re not officially a couple … We’re working on it though. We’re working through some issues.

Sudeikis: You being married is one of them.

Day: Yeah, that’s been blocking us. We get to have the most fun in the movie, in terms of just coming in and being light. We don’t have to carry any sort of emotional arc.

Sudeikis: Low stakes, high-larity. That should play in print if you out a hyphen in there.

Pictured clockwise from left: Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Drew Barrymore and Justin Long in "Going the Distance"

Barrymore: I just want to add — I know the question was not to me, but I’m going to chime in — I find that films, for me, work best when you’re kind of really invested in the whole group of people. I love films that have this Judd Apatow, Christopher Guest alumni quality — you’re just really into all the people in it.

You really like the people’s worlds, so when you cut back and forth between a couple, and it’s like their friends or family or when it’s this group of people interacting, I love when the chemistry goes far beyond just the couple. This movie sort of stands on that. Jim Gaffigan, who’s not in this movie right now, I almost sabotaged every single one of his takes, because he was so funny. I think this movie, if you like it, one of the reasons I like it best is because of everybody in it.

Shankman: The dinner party scene was very difficult to get through because everybody was laughing so hard.

Long: Yeah. I pride myself on being able to hold it together and being stable. I’ve never had a harder time keeping a straight face than when working with these guys. Rob Riggle, Kristen Schaal — we’re so lucky to be surrounded by all these people.

Barrymore: I ruined most of her takes. I felt terrible.

Burstein: What we didn’t want to do was have the Greek chorus. There’s so much comedy and hilarity that comes from both Christina’s character and Justin’s friends Charlie and Jason. So I think it just makes the film that much more fun to watch.

Justin Long, director Nanette Burstein and Drew Barrymore at the London premiere of "Going the Distance"

Adam, you’re a producer, director, "So You Think You Can Dance" judge, dancer and choreographer. Have you ever felt pressure to choose just one facet of your career? And what does each facet bring to you creatively?

Shankman: I spent the summer being a game-show judge. Having you re-affirm that I have a 20-year career makes me so happy. I don’t think about it. I love that this town and this industry have provided me the opportunity to do everything. No one’s ever asked me to focus on any one thing, which is the great thing about just having freedom within this thing. This is a business which is nothing but opportunity, if you choose to look at it that way. So I’ve just sort of sprung at every opportunity that made sense and many that haven’t made sense, and kind of gone with it. And it’s gone really nicely.

But what each does provide, the producing side right now fulfills this wonderful thing where we get to nurture more stories outside my stupid little universe that is much more expansive. We get to nurture directors. Nanette was this great documentarian. Now she gets to have this great other part of her career. I get to hire my friends to be in my movies. As a director, I get to tell all these stories. As a judge on a game show, I get to watch a lot of naked dancers. So it’s a great life!

Long: So you think you can multi-task.

Justin Long in "Going the Distance"

Shankman: Yeah, pretty much. Have you met my accountants: Cheap and Beneath You? Or my other favorite joke: "Ten percent Jewish on my manager’s side." Anyway, it’s wonderful to be able to do that. And Drew has done that. She’s a great producer and director and, thank God, a fabulous movie star and actor.

Barrymore: Thank you, Shankman.

Shankman: And that’s my way of pitching her my new movie later on today.

Charlie, how long did you keep that Hitler-looking moustache you had in "Going the Distance?"

Day: Minutes after we finished we finished that [scene], I shaved it off, because we were in a primarily Jewish neighborhood, and I didn’t think I was going to make it out alive, so I shaved it. And I immediately looked 14 years old when I did.

Justin Long and Drew Barrymore in "Going the Distance"

Can you talk about "Going the Distance" not having the melodramatic clichés that we so often see in movies about romance? How did you balance the comedy with the serious emotional issues?

Burstein: We set out to make a movie that was very honest and realistic, but we never lost sight of the humor. Obviously, as you can tell from my cast, that wasn’t a problem. They’re extremely funny. So while you’re seeing this very emotional scene, the next scene makes you loosen up and laugh uproariously. So it’s a balance that keeps the audience entertained, but at the same time, very moved. We did very much want to stay away from the clichés of this genre, as far as the characters were written to the supporting cast to the way it ends — everything about it, we tried to make it fresh.

Shankman: I’d like to say something in defense of clichés, by the way. They’re clichés because they’re real and they happen. I understand we get bored with watching them, but a lot of times they make things make sense. But I think we successfully didn’t employ them.

Justin Long and Drew Barrymore in "Going the Distance"

Do you see "Going the Distance" as a recession romance?

Barrymore: I just feel like I personally want something that I can escape into and sort of forget what’s going on around me, but I don’t want to lose sight of being able to relate to something. So, for me, I just want that beautiful striking balance. I feel like this film has that. I’m laughing but I’m crying and relating and emotional about it. I feel like it gets surprisingly real, but then it does come and save you and make you laugh. I think the question is more eloquent than the answer, actually.

Long: I disagree. I was indifferent about the question and I loved the answer. I also think the fiscal realities of both the characters play a large part, and it was nice to see that played out. It’s something that a lot of people, especially now, can relate to and just the things that you take for granted when you enter into a long distance relationship, chief among them the logistics. Just getting from point A to B and what is involved with that.

Barrymore: You’re like, "I can’t." You want to see each other but you can’t because of money or schedule.

Long: I ran out of fuel for my hot air balloon.

Barrymore: Exactly!

Nanette, can you talk about why you shot the movie in film and in digital video?

Burstein: The film was predominantly shot in 35 mm. There is a sequence in the movie — the "falling in love" montage — that was shot digitally. That was an experiment that we did on a Saturday. We went to real locations with a very small crew. And Drew and Justin, they just ad-libbed. We wanted it to feel like you’re watching a couple fall in love. And I think we were able to achieve that, so that medium allowed for that kind of situation.

Photo credits: Photos #1, 4, 9, 15: Getty Images. All other photos: Warner Bros. Pictures.