Nice Boy of the Week: Gary Goldstein

This week’s Nice Boy is screenwriter Gary Goldstein. An award-winning writer for film, television, and stage, Gary is the pen behind The Hallmark Channel’s original movie Hitched for the Holidays, starring Joey Lawrence and Emily Hampshire.

I had a chance to chat with Gary about the movie, his career, and more, and can confirm that he is indeed a very Nice Boy. Hitched for the Holidays is Gary’s third project with The Hallmark Channel, adapted from a feature film screenplay. In my review, I remarked that the difference in quality from other made-for-TV movies was obvious.

“That was written as a big New York holiday comedy, fairly high budget, before Hallmark picked it up” Gary relates. “We all worked fairly closely on the script, in the compressing of it, to be sure we were retaining much of the original tone and the big set pieces that made people laugh. They did a good job of making it feel like the big New York movie it was meant to be. I feel like [Hallmark] nailed it.”

Although many of his screenplays are written with the big screen in mind, Gary is pleased that the current state of television, especially on cable, allows characters and stories to develop in ways that movies rarely do anymore. Speaking of movies, what were his inspirations for Hitched for the Holidays?

“[easyazon-link asin=”B000XJD33O”]When Harry Met Sally…[/easyazon-link], [easyazon-link asin=”6305368171″]You’ve Got Mail[/easyazon-link], I think those are great movies and they definitely influenced me. But someone else mentioned, and I hadn’t realized it before, that there’s a little bit of [easyazon-link asin=”6304907729″]Annie Hall[/easyazon-link] in there. In reverse because there it was the Jewish man and the gentile woman, but thinking about that Easter dinner scene with the ham, yeah, inadvertently Annie Hall was an influence.”

The twist of having the leads be from different religious backgrounds added a lot of comic potential to the story, especially since it’s set during the holidays. There aren’t many Hannukah movies, and Gary knew that Hallmark was looking to do a story that involved the Jewish festival of lights. Since his screenplay incorporated both Hannukah and Christmas, it was the perfect fit.

“People generally don’t know a lot about religions outside their own. You can be Christian and have Jewish friends or family members, but you really don’t know the details, you don’t pay attention. So I think it feels real that he doesn’t know what to do with a menorah and she has this whole fear about how to hang the Christmas ornament. It’s daunting, and there was a lot of great humor that was able to come from that. In comedy you want to put people in the place they’d least want to be, that gives them the most discomfort, and certainly the holidays provided plenty of opportunities for that.”

It may seem a little unbelievable that their parents went along with these religious shenanigans, but Gary says this selective blindness comes from a good place. “Both of these families are so desperately want their kids to be together, they’re probably more aware of what’s going on than they let on, but they’re so overwhelmed with the feelings they have for the kids and wanting them to be together, that they overlook it.”

With Hitched for the Holidays now airing on The Hallmark Channel, Gary is focusing on other projects. Production recently wrapped on his next Hallmark feature, This Magic Moment, due to air sometime in 2013. This Magic Moment is about an aspiring screenwriter who runs the local video store and coffee house in his small town. He falls for a famous actress when she comes to town to shoot a movie, and a love triangle develops between them and her sometime boyfriend who’s “a sort of matinee idol.” It sounds a bit like [easyazon-link asin=”B000023VTP”]Notting Hill[/easyazon-link], another of my favorite movies. Gary is pleased with what he’s seen so far: “I’ve seen the director’s cut and I thought it turned out really well.”

He’s also adapting a young adult novel for a romantic comedy geared more toward adults, and writing and pitching other projects to studios and networks.