| By Fred Topel
In Theaters Now
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It’s been a while since we’ve seen Jenny McCarthy in a major movie or even on TV, so what’s she been doing all this time? Well, she had a kid for one thing, but she’s also become an accomplished author of pregnancy and child raising books. What you may not know is that she was a screenwriter long before that. It’s only now that her first script, Dirty Love, has been made and released.
“I wrote the screenplays first. I wrote four screenplays just to kind of see if I could do it. The first one was crap. Well, it’s actually not too bad, but it was a thriller which is kind of ironic. It’s not a comedy. Then I wrote Dirty Love and then I wrote a couple more after that and just let them sit around the house, showed a couple people, they thought it was funny. They said, ‘It’s going to be hard to get financing because you’re not box office girl.’ So just let it linger and then I decided to write some books which was good because then it kind of prepared people for me somewhat being a writer. And then I got financing and made this movie.”
Dirty Love is a gross-out romantic comedy in which McCarthy catches her boyfriend cheating on her and breaks down. Desperately trying to get her life on track, she has a series of disastrous encounters with men featuring the sort of sexual and bodily humor usually reserved for The Farrelly Brothers.
One such scene has McCarthy release an epic period in the middle of a supermarket. “That wasn’t in the script. There was me going to buy very large pads and [director] John [Asher] said, ‘You need to bleed in the store.’ Are you out of your f*cking mind? And then I went, ‘You’re right, I do need to bleed in the store.’ And that was tricky because we kept wanting to go places where no one had dared to go so that was really one way to do it. But we had to walk a fine line because with that scene, if it was played very real [it would just be gross.] Like the first time you see it, like that drop, drop, you’re like, ‘Oh my God.’ But because we went so far with it, which you had to, it made it funny. I mean, it looks like I lost a kidney in the produce section. That was during a working open grocery store I had to do that. We couldn’t afford to close it down so I’m like people shopping and I’m sliding in blood.”
One of McCarthy’s other scripts, Rollin’, is in development, but she says it needs work. “I’m in rewrites right now because like I said, I wrote all these scripts like five years ago, so I took it and went, ‘We’ve got to wait because some of those jokes are a little dated.’ So I’m trying to alter it a little bit. It’s an ensemble cast, but two characters I wrote have become Paris and Nicole in real life. This is before anyone knew who the fuck they were. And everything they said was like ‘That’s hot.’ And I’m like, ‘God dammit, I can’t do it now.’ So I have to retool the script but it’s pretty insane. I mean, Dirty Love went out there, but there’s moments in this one you go, ‘Well, that’s never been done before either.’”
Now that she’s conquered modeling, acting and writing, McCarthy may consider stepping behind the camera with one of her future scripts. “Only stuff that I’ve written because when you write, you see it. I could never look at another script and want to direct it. But when you’re writing, you have to see everything and you become each character and you see every camera angle. That’s why it was hard for me when John was directing me in the movie because here I am the writer. And usually the writer walks away. And he was behind the camera and I go, ‘What are you doing? The old lady goes that way, not that way.’ And he’s like, ‘What are you talking about? Shut up. I’m the director.’ So we did a lot of fighting on that set. But I’d like to maybe try it once. See if I like it.”
After posing in Playboy, co-hosting MTV’s Singled Out and doing films like Baseketball, McCarthy was an icon for young boys. Now she’s won over the ladies.
“It’s honestly changed my life. My favorite thing that I’ve ever done so far, was Belly Laughs. Being chased by pregnant women in the mall forced me to write the follow up which is Baby Laughs about the first year of having a baby. Now I’m in the process of writing the next one so I feel like I’ve found my niche and believe it or not it’s with the girls. Just having a true, raw opinion of what I should say to them, and I think they’re seeing that.”
So far, McCarthy’s books have been autobiographical, but she has some ideas for pure fiction. “I thought about it once. I saw those Harlequin novels and in my new book that I’m writing right now, I write a chapter of my version of a chapter of a comedic Harlequin novel. I mean , it’s like, ‘He walks in the door and thrusts it out and it’s got bumps all over it. Then I replied, ‘Oh no, what’s that?’ Herpes.’ So I might delve into the world of comedic Harlequin novel.”
Dirty Love is now playing. |
