"It could only be George and Julia." Ticket To Paradise director Ol Parker says he didn't have a backup plan

From gorgeous Balinese vistas to George Clooney’s swagger to Julia Roberts’ smile (and laugh, and hair, and everything), there are plenty of reasons to catch Ticket To Paradise on a big screen, popcorn in hand. As director and co-writer Ol Parker reveals, that’s no coincidence. This reunion of two of our biggest movie stars was born out of pandemic ennui and a desire to gather rom-com fans for some old-fashioned escapist entertainment.

The film was written entirely with Clooney and Roberts in mind, according to Parker. Had the Ocean’s Eleven co-stars turned it down, he adds, this tale of two divorcees trying to break up the wedding of their daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) to a seaweed-farming local (Maxime Bouttier) would have remained a mere twinkle in Parker’s eye. The helmer of Imagine Me & You, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again sat with The A.V. Club to chat about the impulses and influences behind Ticket To Paradise, as well as the rules behind structuring genre films, whether that’s rom-coms or Die Hard or The Avengers.

The A.V. Club: Congratulations on Ticket To Paradise, which feels like the big, beautiful rom-com we’ve all been dying to see.

Ol Parker: Well, I started writing it with [Daniel Pipski] at the beginning of the pandemic and yes, it was sort of like I didn’t know how to respond to, you know, everything. The fact that the world had changed and possibly irrevocably. And I knew I wasn’t going to write Contagion 2, you know, [or] Lockdown: The Movie. Other people would do that better than me. So I just thought the opposite: Let’s try and write something as sunny and funny and happy as possible, with beautiful movie stars and beautiful views. [It was about] trying to take myself, just for the pleasure of writing it, out of the mundanity of what we were all living.

AVC: Wow, so the original impulse here was the antithesis to the state of the world?

OP: The antithesis of the world, yeah. Like, what would I like to see when this ends? If this ends.

AVC: And were there expectations that this would end up happening for sure?

OP: I mean, there’s never expectations of [a film] happening! Especially not if you decide, as I did, that it could only be George and Julia in the movie and that I wouldn’t make it if it wasn’t. So with that, you’ve basically consigned the whole thing to the dustbin of history.

AVC: So there was no plan B casting if George and Julia said no?

OP: No, no. Because if you’re doing a thing about a divorced couple, then you’ve got to believe in the marriage. And apart from the fact that they’re obviously brilliant and gorgeous and talented and all those good things, it was also just their shared history on screen. My first pitch to Universal about it, I said that I wanted it to feel like a sequel to a movie that you hadn’t seen. And they sort of bring that with them. They have that sense that there was a movie, that they were a couple.

AVC: It’s fascinating that their casting was integral to writing the script.

OP: Literally, her character’s called Georgia in the movie and his used to be called Julius. [Laughs] So we’d just swapped their names. But then it seemed a bit obvious when we sent it to them. So he’s now called David, but the first three drafts, they were literally called Julius and Georgia rather than George and Julia. That’s how nakedly it was written for them.

And I sent it to both of them at the same time, which you never do. Because then if one of them turns it down, the other one will turn it down, because they become insecure, you know what I mean? So I sent it to both of them going, “This only works if it’s you and the other one.” And luckily they said yes … George hadn’t done [a rom-com] since One Fine Day, he doesn’t do them. And Julia is, obviously, the queen.

AVC: And how much of this has to do with approaching the romantic comedy film genre itself? What do you think is the state of rom-coms today?

OP: I think it went away for a while. And the tropes became a little overused and a little too obvious: the airport dash, the public declaration, you know, certain things that we’ve come to expect. If you know the ending—obviously, you know at the end of Die Hard he’s going to save everything. With this, you know that they’re going to get together. So the journey is what’s important. It’s how it happens rather than what happens. And so when those things start to become clichés that you understand and know—the meet-cute, you know—then you have to find different ways to spin it. Or it goes away for a while, which is I think what happened. And so then you find younger ones or older ones; Marigold Hotel I thought of as just a series of rom-coms. I actually thought of it as a teen movie, just that they all happened to be 75.

AVC: I love your mentioning Die Hard. Are there some genres or tropes of cinema that follow more strict rules than others?

OP: Sure, I mean, if you’re going to see Tár, you know Cate Blanchett’s going to be amazing, but you don’t know what happens. Any thriller, you know in the end that they’re going to save the world, save whatever, The Avengers, whatever cost there may be to the world, you understand the ending. And so then it becomes the journey that’s important. Rom-coms are predetermined, obviously, that’s how it’s going to be. So it’s just trying to make it fun.

AVC: So these structures go through cycles—now we’ve all exhausted these clichés or rules, they need to recede for a bit.

OP: Marvel’s doing it now, I believe. I don’t really watch those movies, but the superhero movies, The Avengers have now gone into a different place. You know, when everything matters, nothing matters. It seems that once the fate of the world is on the line every time, then that becomes a little tedious. So they’ve had to go into phase—I don’t know what it is, three, four?—of their amazing world domination. So, yeah, I think every genre has to go through a reinvention.

AVC: And to your earlier point, Ticket To Paradise is less reinvention and more a 2022 movie because it was born out of a desire for escapism?

OP: Yeah. There’s a shot of them by the swimming pool where he’s in his tux and she looks stunning. And I called George to the monitor because it’s such a nice shot—quite early on, the first week, I think. And he pounded me on the back, and went, “Old school!” And then that became his favorite praise through the movie, which was really nice. When we did something he thought was right or good, it was “old school.” And so it was consciously a throwback, to glamorous locations, glamorous movie stars.

AVC: Speaking of which, let’s talk inspirations. Were there any films that informed the process?

OP: Oh, well, it’s difficult in terms of inspiration because I’m not putting myself on a par with them. But for this, we talked with Julia about The Philadelphia Story, which is her favorite movie. So again, going old school. We talked about [Katharine] Hepburn and [Spencer] Tracy as well, those movies. His Girl Friday, I watched with my friend Dan, who I wrote this with. It’s extraordinarily bickery, Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell just arguing—with Ralph [Bellamy], who is our Lucas Bravo character, basically.

That film has a similar thing with Lucas’ character that we thought was funny, the idea that in the end, you want to be with someone who challenges you. [Bravo’s character thinks Roberts’ character] is sexy and gorgeous and everything she does is perfect and that’s what you think you want. But in the end, actually, you want…

AVC: George Clooney?

OP: You always want George because he’s George! But you also want the guy that challenges you.