We can't help but wonder: Why more 'Sex,' why now?
After 'Sex and the City' left TV, we missed the talk, the raunch, the shoes. Now a film puts the moves on.
NEW YORK CITY - Things were tied up so neatly, weren't they?
Big had decided Carrie was the one. Miranda had learned to love a man and a borough. Charlotte had a baby on the way. Samantha had found herself an equal partner.
Plenty was said about 2004's "Sex and the City" series finale - both positive and negative - but no one could argue that the ending didn't give us extreme closure.
So, why return? Why take a risk and make a movie?
The answer is partly simple: because you missed them - and you weren't shy about it.
You watched repeats and bought the DVDs. You consumed self-help books based on episodes and bought fragrances and clothing designed by the show's stars. Even years after "Sex and the City" died, you continued to blog about what would happen after the finale as if the characters were real.
In other words, blame yourselves.
"The fact that I knew I had an enormous amount of love in the world for these characters was sort of the thing that overpowered the fear of, 'You're going to fail,' " says "Sex and the City" writer-director Michael Patrick King. "The fact that the fans wanted to see the girls more than I was afraid to write them was a big deal."
Yes, there is financial motivation for a "Sex and the City" film; fanatical fans will undoubtedly see the movie at least once.
But after a screening of the two-and-a-half-hour "Sex and the City" movie (yes, it's that long) in New York City earlier this month, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, and "Sex" mastermind King said in separate interviews that their main reason for making the "Sex and the City" movie was that the four archetypal characters have been deeply missed by fans, who haven't found adequate replacements for their fictional friends, despite the onslaught of television knockoffs such as "Cashmere Mafia" (by "Sex and the City" producer Darren Star) and "Lipstick Jungle," (like "Sex and the City," also based on a book by Candace Bushnell).
Cattrall says the rabid "Sex" fan base hasn't diminished or moved on since the finale. They've just been wallowing in the past, quoting episodes, and blogging about reunions. And thanks to syndication on networks such as TBS and the CW, the show's reach only continues to grow.
"It's about family," says Cattrall, who was wearing a light-blue dress too tame for Samantha. "You say, 'I miss these characters.' Well that's what you say about your family. You say, 'I miss my family.' That boundary is so easily crossed because you come into people's living rooms."
So, that's an answer to the question of "Why?" - it's supply for your demand. As for why it took so long, King says, in his cheekiest of voices, "Ladies take their time."
That's code for "contract negotiations."
When "Sex and the City" ended four years ago, movie discussions came on fast thanks to the more than 10 million viewers who watched the series finale (that made it the second most watched episode of a show in HBO history, just behind the fourth season premiere of "The Sopranos"), the online mourning of the show, not to mention all the women's studies debates that came after. It was reported at the time that plans for a film faltered when Cattrall, who became iconic as the fearless Samantha, held out for more money.
Parker confirmed this with some defensiveness.
"The first time around, the money just wasn't right for Kim, and I think sadly, the next step in journalism just wasn't taken, which was, perhaps, before deciding that we all had vilified her, was that she is perfectly at liberty to make that decision, and we have to respect it, and we did," says Parker, who arrived to her interview in a dress and heels fit for Carrie. "And were we disappointed we didn't make the movie then? Yeah. But does a person have the freedom to make that kind of choice? Absolutely."
Cattrall added, of the tabloid headlines about catfights at the time, "It's a very old story to stir things up and pit women against each other. Women coming together sometimes can scare people."
The movie idea was dormant until two years ago, when, as Parker explains it, "Something happened in my brain. I can't give you a good, rational reason that the time was now, but I felt pretty certain that the time wasn't later."
King was back on board, but because years had passed, his initial ideas for a "Sex" movie no longer held up. Sure, he could have kept his original plan for the movie and had the story line pick up in 2004 - where Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha had left off - but King says he opted to start from scratch and to ask himself where his "four perfect story machines" would be in 2008.
"The smart thing was to pick them up now because their girlfriends, and by that I mean the audience, they all moved on," King says. "It would be a major disconnect if they didn't reflect back your life now. It'd be like four women found in a block of amber underneath the Earth. You'd be like, 'Huh?" '
And it turned out, there were benefits to waiting. A show that had been about single women in their 30s became a movie about what it means to be 40 and beyond. King had so many ideas for the film that his first draft was 365 pages. He had created subplots for so many minor characters that to his disappointment, he had to pare them down or eliminate them altogether.
"I could have written a whole movie about John Corbett," King says - not revealing whether Corbett's earnest, furniture-making character Aidan pops up in the film. "I could have written a big chapter about Enid, Candice Bergen's character."
Still, with all the cuts, the final product is almost three hours. King calls it "the female 'Lord of the Rings.' "
"The fact that it's four female leads, there was a responsibility to each of their lives. But also, all of the fans - when people heard we were doing the movie, fans would say, 'Don't make it short.' I didn't want this to feel like three episodes strung together."
Not every past boyfriend makes his way into the film, but King, whose "Sex" scripts often ignored or ridiculed 20-somethings, does pay respect to young women with a new character, Carrie's personal assistant Louise, played by Oscar-winner and "American Idol" veteran Jennifer Hudson.
"That's really decadent to me, to have another character in this movie that's already busting at the seams," King says.
According to King, Louise represents the young women who move to New York every year and make the city run - what Carrie Bradshaw would have been two decades ago. King also says that if you watch the film closely, you'll notice that the people waiting tables, making phone calls, and serving the leads are all women in their 20s.
What else can you expect to see when the film opens on Friday (or at midnight on Thursday, if you're a die-hard fan)?
Well, King agrees that nothing would feel quite right without a little bit of Ukrainian housekeeper-nanny Magda. And, of course, the film sparkles with orgasmic getups thanks to stylist Patricia Field, who has Carrie dressed in high couture in a
And, as the previews suggest, the film answers the wedding question.
"When the movie became an idea, I knew that the one story that had been left untold from talking to people over the years was the big story - literally the Big story," King says, referring to Chris Noth's character, who not only has a first name in the movie, but gets a last name, too. "Will they, would they, won't they, and what would that be? I knew that I had the idea of a wedding in my mind, and I said, OK, this is Carrie Bradshaw, so the wedding has to be complicated, if it exists at all."
Cagey, isn't he? As you've seen in the trailers, nothing is clear, and King and Parker have been especially good at keeping the ending of this movie a secret. There are death rumors going around online about Big and about Steve's mother. And to add to the confusion, during filming, King often would imply to passersby that every single outdoor shot was a dream sequence just to throw them off.
All Parker discloses about what you'll see on the big screen is a film that says that "not every sentence has to end with a period." How very Carrie of her.
Or as King ambiguously puts it, "I think that the single biggest question about a series that started about being single is, you know, keep making yourself happy and maybe someone else will come along and join you. It's about don't listen to society. It's about happily ever after on your own terms."
But the fans already knew that, didn't they?
Meredith Goldstein can be reached at mgoldstein@globe.com.
