Love Virtually Interview: Stephen Tobolowsky On Making A Metaverse Movie During The Pandemic - Screen Rant

Summary

• Love Virtually is a retro-future rom-com that explores the absurd reality of our world and our increasing dependence on virtual reality.
• The film features an impressive cast, including Stephen Tobolowsky and Cheri Oteri, and was created during the height of the pandemic.
• The movie delves into important themes such as the blurred line between love and excitement, the impact of online interactions on relationships, and the consequences of relying too heavily on technology.

New romantic comedy Love Virtually tells the story of four different couples who attempt to nurture their romances in a world that has become dependent on virtual reality. Stephen Tobolowsky plays Dr. Divine, a therapist who believes he is having a virtual affair. However, due to the nature of direct messaging and the Metaverse, he remains unaware that the woman he's communicating with is his own wife.

Tobolowsky has nearly 300 acting credits and has been featured in a variety of projects. His most well-known roles are among titles such as The Goldbergs, Groundhog Day, and One Day at a Time. In addition to Tobolowsky, the main cast includes Cheri Oteri, Paul F. Tompkins, Peter Gilroy, Ryan O’Flanagan, Adam Ray, Nikki Howard, Tom Virtue, Paige Mobley, Vincent Washington, Ksenia Valenti, Harper Frawley, L.E. Staiman.

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​​Screen Rant interviewed Stephen Tobolowsky about creating Love Virtually during the height of the pandemic and the complications of filming scenes apart from the main cast.

Stephen Tobolowsky Talks Love Virtually

Screen Rant: You've been involved in almost 300 projects, so what stuck out to you about Love Virtually?

Stephen Tobolowsky: I have no idea. I had worked with L.E. Staiman before on a small little project. I knew he was so smart, and so good, and he was the director of this, and so he said, "Stephen, what do you think about this?" They gave me the script, but I trusted him. I trusted him. I put my faith in him. Then, I heard about Cheri Oteri playing my wife, and I thought, "What could possibly be wrong?" And of course, what was wrong was the world was collapsing. We had our first film meeting on the back of a truck like we were in Burbank somewhere. We were in our cars because it was the beginning of the pandemic. In the very beginning of the pandemic, everybody was dying. That's all people knew, is that you were dying.

You had all the people in the old folks home dying and all the people in Italy dying. Nobody knew what COVID was. It was a monstrous time. So we had our first film meeting. I met L.E. at the back of this building, and they lifted the back door to the shop, and he was standing there, and I was outside my car, and we were about 20–25 feet away from each other. He says, "So, what do you think about the movie?" I go, "Well, I think it's worth a shot." He said, "Don't worry. We'll make it all safe." It was terrifying. In Judaism, Hillel states, "If I am not for myself, who is? If I am for myself alone, what am I? And if not now, when?"

Sometimes, that "If not now, when?" kind of kicks in in my life. I thought, why not? I wanted to be an actor. All I want to do is act in things. So now we are at the end of the world, what could be worse than acting with L.E. and Cheri Oteri? This sounds like a victory. Let's do this. We did it! Cheri and I shot our scenes for a couple of weeks. We were always kept very separate, and we almost never acted with other people in the room. It was a movie made with Xs. They put Xs on the wall. "Look at the X. Those are the people you're talking to, and we'll shoot them later." We shot all of our stuff, and then I heard nothing for a couple of years, because they were doing all the 3D animation.

L.E. had never really got me into that before, and the whole movie relies on it, and it depends on it. I just saw the movie myself two weeks ago, and I loved it. Not only does it capture the essence of the essential issue of, "Is the computer our friend or our enemy?" and "What is more important? Excitement or love?" Can we confuse the two? Is there such a thing as true love? Can we use the computer as a tool to find true love? Or is it only a tool for distraction and for wasting time? All of that permeated through the movie.

It wasn't just a comedy about people looking for love or looking for trouble and using the computer as a tool for doing that, but it became a whole chronicle of where I think we are with online stuff and also what's happened with the pandemic—how people have grown apart from the pandemic, and we're used to it now. Kids in school that had masks on and all that stuff and were kept separate, now they're having all of these emotional and mental problems from the pandemic and not being able to play with real kids and learning their lessons online on the computer.

There are cognitive problems that these kids have from not being with people, but just being with machines. I have grandbabies now, and there's nothing they love more than that iPhone, let me tell you. They are very busy. They want to see Cocomelon on that iPhone. But that's what I got out of the movie. I was proud that we did it. I was proud we did it at a very dangerous time. And once again, I thought L.E. just did a magnificent job of weaving all these stories together with a bunch of actors that were terrified, and then with a bunch of computer graphics to tie everything together. I just thought it was a wonderful job.

Some of the funniest moments take place over direct messaging. When you’re typing on a keyboard, is it difficult to emote and get into character, or did you have someone narrating the voiceovers for you as the scene was ongoing?

Stephen Tobolowsky: When we were text messaging, of course, I just did stuff where I'm pretending I'm typing. Sometimes, you didn't want to type because it makes noise over the vocal. So you just have to kind of not touch the keyboard. That's acting. They would have an X to look at on the screen where Cheri is going to be. You would look at the X. There was a lot of X acting in this. When you can't really look outward as an actor, you learn that everything you need to know is in the eyes of your partner. I think Stanislavski said that. I was able to look in Cheri's eyes no problem because you see everything you need to see. There's her energy, her lunacy, and her absolute willingness to go for it all the time every second.

She never phones it in, even when she's phoning it in in Love Virtually, she's never phoning it in. That's always good. You just kind of rely upon what you know is true in your life. I have been in couples therapy. I have had a series of couples therapists that I've learned a lot from. I remember when my first relationship went off the rails, I went to a couples therapist. I walked into the room, and I'd never been in therapy before. Never. They ring a buzzer and that means you could go through the door. I didn't know psychiatrists and all these people locked doors all the time. You go in the door, and you walk into the office and there's the couch. He's laying on the couch and there's a folding chair in front of the couch. He goes, "You have to sit in the folding chair. I have to lay on the couch because I have to listen to you people all day long."

He says, "So Stephen, tell me what's wrong." I said, "I think the love of my life and my relationship is going off the rails. I feel like I'm dying every day. I feel like my heart is not only broken, but I feel like I'm in a million pieces, and I don't know if I can ever collect all the pieces again." He goes, "Stephen, you're a relatively young man. You're successful in your line of work. Women like that you're successful. I think you should go out, maybe to some singles bars, pick up some strange women, talk to them, go out and have a sexual experience with them, and come back and tell me about it." And I go, "Jack, this sounds like terrible advice. You're asking me to hook for you? Am I pimping for you, Jack? Do you want these sexual experiences? This sounds really bad, Jack."

That was my first experience, so I never really had a ton of respect for couples therapy people. Working off of that, I thought, "Well, I will approach all of these people with my grandiosity of 'I know what I'm doing, and I really don't care what happens to these other people.'" I just kind of approach it that way. The main thing is my relationship to Cheri and whoever I'm communicating with on the computer. That's the thing that's going to make me feel alive—this new relationship I'm developing on the sly on my computer. Those are the two worlds that were conflicting for me. I probably lived most of those for real.

What I found interesting about Divine and Evelyn's relationship is that they think they're fed up with each other, but they're actually really enjoying each other's company without knowing it.

Stephen Tobolowsky: Right? Sometimes, you have to look at your partner with new eyes, and you have to realize maybe the problem with you is that you're really not seeing what's in front of you. I've been married to Ann for 34 years, and we have had problems. Little problems were big in that she used to always watch murder TV shows while I was trying to go to sleep. I would have early calls to do The Goldbergs. I'd have to get up at 4am to get ready to go to Sony Studios by 5:30 to start shooting at 6. She's watching Forensic Files, and I'm going, "Baby, please, I'm trying to go to sleep." She says, "No, but I love the Forensic Files."

I said, "I don't care if you love the Forensic Files. I'm just saying I'm trying to go to sleep, and I can't stand these people that are cutting their wives up into pieces and burying them in oil drums. I can't stand that while I'm trying to go to sleep. Just watch something else." And we would have a fight over it or something like that. Let me tell you, when I was in serious trouble, and my life was on the line and I had to go and have heart surgery, that girl came in. One night, I was pressing the button. I had this Russian nurse. She was seven feet tall. She was, like, a pole vaulter or something. She was explaining to me this controller that she gave me.

I had just had my body cut in two. I can't move. I can hardly do anything. I'm in constant pain. You press this button if you need the nurse, and you press this button if you want to watch TV. If you're dying, you press this button, and it's all on the same controller. I had a docking accident one night. I needed help getting to the bathroom, and I needed dry clothes. That's how terrible this is. So I'm pressing the button for the nurse to come. I'm pressing the button and nobody comes. I press the button for "I'm dying" to get somebody in here. Nobody comes. Then, the Russian comes in about 30 minutes later, and I explained to her that I had a docking problem with the pee bottle, and I needed to get new sheets and I needed clothes. She says, "You were not dying. You have misused the blue button."

The next day, my wife came in and called a meeting on the floor. She says, "Everybody, come here now. Doctors, nurses, here, now. What happened last night with my husband is not going to happen again. The first thing you're going to do is put a bed in that room for me. And from now on you take orders from me. Do you understand? He can't really talk much now because he's in serious shape, but I can, and you will listen to what I say. Do you understand? Or I'll make your life a living hell." And I go, "For better or for worse, for rich or for poor, as long as you both shall live." And then you go, "That's my girl." In Love Virtually, I think Cheri Oteri and I kind of feel that way about each other. We just haven't discovered it yet. Nobody has pressed the blue button.

We haven't reached that stage where we discover, really, who we are and what we are for each other. And so we have mistaken diversion for an excitement for love. I think that's embedded with all of the different characters in the movie, which is terrific. They all are at these different stages of, "Am I looking for love? Am I not? Or am I just looking for people clicking subscribe and like?" That killed me during the movie—the number of people who say, "Remember to subscribe." I get that all the time now—before we talk, please hit the subscribe button. What world do we live in? I love that in terms of the relationships in the movie. I thought they were all real, and they all revealed people at different stages of either falling in love or falling out of love and where they look for the solutions.

About Love Virtually

In a world where the Metaverse has become widely adopted, four couples go to ridiculous lengths to find true love in a virtual world. Love Virtually is a retro-future satirical rom-com for the Metaverse era, blending live action and 3D animation as it explores and exposes the absurd reality of our world and where we are heading, while probing life’s deepest questions such as: How does a celebrity find someone who loves them for their true selves? Is it cheating if it’s in VR? And, is it cheating if it’s with an AI?

Check out our interview with Love Virtually star Cheri Oteri, as well.

Love Virtually is currently available to stream on Digital and On Demand.

Source: Screen Rant Plus

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https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiSWh0dHBzOi8vc2NyZWVucmFudC5jb20vbG92ZS12aXJ0dWFsbHktbW92aWUtc3RlcGhlbi10b2JvbG93c2t5LWludGVydmlldy_SAQA?oc=5

2023-11-30 20:00:00Z

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